The Mutual Self-destruction of Left and Right

WHENEVER one considers the contemporary fetishisation of political extremism and the fact that most people are less interested in finding genuine solutions to the problems of this world than battering the hell out of a mirror-image that stares back at them from the other side of a barricade, we would do well to recall the wise words of Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) on moderation:

"There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being."

It seems unusual to include a reference to self-loathing at the heart of a discussion about balance and composure, but as I have pointed out on numerous occasions before, those on the Left and Right are simply attacking that which they despise in themselves in an uncontrolled storm of psychological projection. The Left seeks to destroy the 'authoritarianism' that it detects within itself, whilst the Right applies a similar attitude with respect to the 'weakness' and 'degeneracy' that it conveniently blames on its counterparts. Having met a large number of people from both sides of the political spectrum, I know this to be true and it is a fact that many individuals on the Left are often far more uncompromising than those on what has become a very anxious and troubled Right.

This incessant quest to destroy the self through the medium of the other, heightened by the cataclysmic events of the last century, is a chilling fulfilment of Sigmund Freud's (1856-1939) so-called thanatos principle, or death-drive. "The goal of all life," he said, "is death." I do not subscribe to that particular viewpoint and neither do I have much time for Freud himself, although it is clear that we humans do have a tendency to fall prey to the oscillating rhythms of the Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy. The famous novelist, Rebecca West (1892-1983), once said that

"Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set life back to its beginnings, and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations."

Her words certainly offer a timely reminder about the self-destructiveness of modern man, even if they do smack of bourgeois complacency at a time when some form of change is clearly required. As always, we must strike a firm balance and this means rejecting the counter-productivity of Left-Right dim-wittedness and facilitating an atmosphere in which people can find their more authentic niche. At the same time, if we are to obtain a space in which to live in accordance with our own principles then it also becomes necessary to find an appropriate outlet for such passions.

There will always be fighters and warriors, lovers and artists, poets and writers, mystics and eccentrics, but authentic self-expression can only be achieved by moving away from the mass societies in which people are tamed and compromised by the false 'plurality' of statism. The solution lies in channelling these energies in a more positive direction; not at each other, but towards those ideals which nurture and fulfil the peculiarities of one's own tastes and desires.