"A functionalist morality play"

Act I. How a functionalist's farce became a modern morality play

I.1 Man's search for a paper topic

I.1.i Question: "Does nationalism conflict with globalism?"

What impressed me, when I asked this of a FedSoc classmate, was his quick reflexes: “Obviously!” Then again, a libertarian is an adult who still believes an invisible hand will catch him, no matter which way he leaps.

I.1.ii Method: informal colloquy (aka magic)

Yet in his reflexive dismissiveness, I recognized myself: hiding my beliefs from logic, smuggling to judgment.

Seeing my mulishness in his shook my confidence in my masculinity (for, what distinguishes man from the animals, is our patience to articulate phrases like "what distinguishes man from the animals"; plus, mules are sterile). I groped for a path from mulehood to manhood; I remembered Eben saying that the path to judgment passes through understanding; my hoof jerked one evolutionary hoofstep towards rumination.

And a miracle came to pass: two mules ruminated together.

I.2 His question

I.2.i Is it even a valid question?

"It becomes a valid question when I answer it," I brayed. "Wait for the answer."

I.2.ii Defining Nationalism functionally

An Ism is a vision that empowers an audience to lead itself somewhere.

Nationalism is a tautology ("an audience pursuing whatever vision it arrives at") until measured against an independent variable. Rousseau called that outside stimulus a "lawgiver," but it's just a name.

The converse feels equally true: we can define a nation as a group with a consistent social reaction to a known stimulus. Its identity is that reaction. The national axes against which anthropologists measure identities—attitudes towards God, poverty, death, leisure—were long entrenched by the time global corporations disembarked on native shores.

I.2.iii Defining Capitalism functionally

Today, the external stimulism is globalism. By which I mean Globalization, by which I mean Capitalism. ("Arghhh," brayed my classmate. "You strain for parallelism.") Marx defined capitalism as the phenomenon unfolding between the French and Communist Revolutions. I prefer to let it denote consumerism, profit's enslavement of thought, marketing's enslavement of man. Capitalism functions as a vector for fetishism, which is just one's expectation to find more delight in things than people.

I.3 His Answer

I.3.i Nationalism - Capitalism = armies+highways+lighthouses = Love

Thus the phrase "private property" carries a double meaning: capitalism invites the individual to cannibalize his public spirit, to digest love and reconstitute it as onanism.

I.3.ii Nationalism vs. Capitalism = socialism vs. solipsism = Us vs. Me

The tide of globalism has been rising since World War II. It drowns ancient cultures, has tapped out the sea of faith, is a reverse land bridge for the global migration of Chinese-sourced tchotchkes.

The Amish invite every member to enjoy the city before he must choose local communalism or urban narcissism. But they postpone his informed decision until sixteen years of communal inculcation. Under globalism, the international agents of industrial stockholders invade the communes; glut the next generation's infant fetishes; indoctrinate by addiction.

I.3.iii Nationalism vs. Capitalism→colonialism = socialism vs. solipsism→utilitarianism

But even if the answer to my question is "yes," it cannot be a "yes" of the form, "and the winner will be ..." Rather, the industrial world is reconciling these symbolic foes dialectically:

* nationalism vs. capitalism→colonialism
* socialism vs. solipsism→utilitarianism

These marriages seem more stable, and more volatile, than the one-night stand the Nazis pulled on the Communists. Yet the one thing socialism and solipsism still won't discuss at pillow talk is how to actually measure the utilities they claim to be adding. They can't.

I.4 His tragedy

I.4.i While the national folkdance is still getting its shoes on ...

If business is "That government which markets its brand through sales contracts," we may restate my question thus: whether corporations (transferable-contractual-solipsistic-private spirited) or constitutions (territorial-democratic-socialist-public spirited) can market (legitimize) themselves better.

Let me conjure the stakes for you. Capitalism already captured TV: if you're a zombie, you won; forever may you cherish your memories of childhood, eating dinner in a frontfacing row with your parents alongside. But Bloch would look for the "storm corner for the revolution" in the Internet.

I.4.ii ... Globalization gets halfway around the world ...

Alas, I suspect the storm in this corner will fizzle out like all the others. We've long drifted from Jeffersonian democracy into the totalitarian feudalism of corporate contracts.

* It is old-fashioned to argue that the owner of a media channel controls its content, when some corporate "brand" owns the owner's mind. A neurologist can literally trace the scar where that brand was seared into your optical cortex.
* Marketing is not sales. It is the rationing of identity. Marketing names us and the mall breathes life into us.
* Every day you vote in several elections—or at least a push-poll—in which corporate brainwashing machines fight to legitimize their mental property in you.
* Marketing is like bacteria, it is everywhere. Long after fallout kills even the cockroaches, our billboards will scar the earth like the flag on the moon.

I.4.iii ... so face it, we're fucked.

I never dreaded the offspring of the dialectical marriage more than when I read Ernst Bloch arguing that the rhetoric of fascism ("advanced capitalism") is more alluring than Communism's, therefore it would swiftly sublate the Revolution, therefore Communists should remove Democrats from Fascism's rise to power. In our own time, I fear that public narcissism becomes irrevocable the day we let our own rough Orwellian beast (utilitarianism) slouch over the last tribe on earth.

I.5 His catharsis

I.5.i But maybe he said "We're in luck"? I can't hear well over the harping cherubs

And yet, I'm still an optimist. The mall is cheery.

I.5.ii Legitimacy

When I'm not at the mall, I snuggle up with the late sociologist Peter Drucker.

I.5.iii Oversight

When whistleblowers are the only law-enforcement, we're gonna wish we passed that journalist shield law.

I.5.iv No ancestors! We're freeeeee! ! !

While writing this paper, I imagine Eben looking out at our classroom, our generation, our future. I would not be able to restrain my temper so well.

Act II. Modern morality play : messiah :: Functionalist farce : overman

"What we just did," said one mule to the other, massaging under his bootstraps, "is impossible. Mules don't ruminate."

"That's why I love America," said the other. "It invented pragmatism because it doesn't like the truth. Now we can invent the truth too." As if to demonstrate, he took another drag from his reefer.*

"Then tell your professor I said this," brayed the first: "Our generation may have degenerated into stubborn mules, but if we're supposed to have sterilized ourselves as well, then I deny being a mule at all!"

[*Editorial note: the actual author just has a headcold.]

TO BE CONTINUED ...