Social Evolution: Idols are Dead
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Social Evolution: Idols are Dead
Lecturer Onur Ekler
Zirve University, onurekler@gmail.com
Abstract
Time is ticking away. The society is decaying like the Cumean Sibyl. It wishes to die in
order to complete its ritualistic cycle of death and rebirth, but it never dies since it has
lost its spirit. It seeks cure in the outside world with wrong methods and finds itself
where it starts. It revolves in a vicious circle stepping many times in already trodden
paths like Sisyphus and creating collective minds, which orbit around the idols.
However, the cure lies deep within the individual. The cure for society is not revolutions
with partisan interests, but the evolution of an individual. It is the evolution, which
begins not in society with sudden destructive actions, but in individual like Hamlet who
sets out a voyage of patience through time to illuminate the dark paths of the
unconscious that has been long suppressed and hidden behind the mirror of idolatrized
society. To this end, this paper aims to show the reader the evolutionary stages that the
individual must pass through from idolatrized society with decaying culture based on
binary logic to the multi- non-linear- fluid society, which is always in the middle in order
to complete the cycle of death and rebirth.
Keywords: revolution, evolution, idols, binary, Sisyphus, society
1. Introduction
Time is ticking away. The society is decaying like the Cumean Sibyl. It wishes to die
in order to complete its ritualistic cycle of death and rebirth, but it never dies since it has lost
its spirit. The ideas are stifled and stagnant and stuck like the frozen paintings on the
Grecian Urn. It seeks cure in the outside world with wrong methods and finds itself where it
starts. It revolves in a vicious circle stepping many times in already trodden paths like
Sisyphus and creating collective minds, which orbit around the idols. However, the cure lies
deep within the individual. The cure for society is not revolutions with partisan interests, but
the evolution of an individual. It is the evolution, which begins not in society with sudden
destructive actions, but in individual like Hamlet who sets out a voyage of patience through
time to illuminate the dark paths of the unconscious that has been long suppressed and
hidden behind the mirror of idolatrized society. To this end, this paper aims to show the
reader the evolutionary stages that the individual must pass through from idolatrized
society with decaying culture based on binary logic to the multi- non-linear- fluid society,
which is always in the middle in order to complete the cycle of death and rebirth. This paper
first focuses on the hindrances that keep society rolling in Daedalus’ maze where the end is2014, Dil ve Edebiyat Eğitimi Dergisi, 11, 46-52.
2014, Journal of Language and Literature Education, 11, 46-52.
in the beginning and the beginning is in the end. Then, it puts forward the evolutionary
stages that put the society in the evolutionary track again since man lost the organic unity
long before because of the “dissociation of sensibility” as T.S. Eliot puts it.
2. Society in Repetitive Existence
In the beginning there was an empty darkness. Then Eros came and restored order
out of chaos. God said, “Let there be light and Light there was.” And light brings order to the
chaotic darkness and abyss. “Recite with the name of God, the compassionate and the
merciful who created you out of mud...” The creation myths in holy religious books and
mythologies associate the power of the words (said, recite and order...), however, the words
uttered are controlled by a centric word: “God”. Each word not having an arbitrary but a
guided relation to each other is necessary to direct and canalize the minds to accept the
conditions of hierarchical structure to which they belong. In this respect, the world in which
we live is based on the principles of such kind of a hierarchical order from the languages we
speak to the way we live. This cyclic order never changes. Each who takes over and pulls the
strings of society shapes his own order to his own understanding. And the language we use
is reshaped in an appropriate form by the ones who have the power. It is a vicious circle.
The established order is quite similar to a tree whose boughs are organized in
hierarchal way. This ossified structure creates its own order and strata. The governors and
the governed always change their positions depending on any kind of reasons from
revolution to dethronement in the course of time; however, the existing system never
changes. Each newcomer as a governor tries to impose his own truth on the public and
establishes his own order. This cyclic order can be likened to a teeter-totter. The governors or
the elite sit on one side, the governed on the other. While the governors always go up, the
governed go down. The governed have to hump them if voluntarily or involuntarily. The
hierarchal model of society is drawn with the strict boundaries. And the society is forced to
drift through discursive thoughts into predetermined spaces. Man is trapped in this dualistic
game based on power relations and relentlessly continues to play revolutionism in order to
claim the panopticon, the controlling centre in the society just as the old woman insistently
listens her husband’s story for fifty years after she doses herself with salt to delete her
memory in Ionesco’s play The Chairs. This cyclic order of the game in the repetitive existence
is the biggest hindrance before the evolution of society. If the society does not like the
existing order in the game, they prefer to revolve the system to their own understanding
instead of discarding the game making pave for more evolutionary game. However, this is
nothing but rewriting the history within different discourse. As Goethe claims: “revolutions
made by partisan interests merely distort or impede the great harmonies of progress.”
3. Discursive Thoughts: Language, Media and Hegemony
Naturalism and ‘realism’ – the apparent fidelity of the representation to the thing or
concept represented – is the result, the effect, of a certain specific articulation of
language on the ‘real (Hall: 1973, 55).
Reality exists outside of the language or iconic signs, which consist of discursive
codes. When it is put into any kind of thoughts, the dominant ideologies of the society in
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2014, Journal of Language and Literature Education, 11, 46-52.
encoded signs canalize, pervert and disseminate the guided reality to the recipients through
discourses like mass media. Reality can be likened to a stick and language to water. One
always sees the stick is broken when it is put into water. The refraction of reality in the
discursive language based on power relations is inevitable.
Codes of this order clearly contract relations for the sign with the wider universe of
ideologies in a society. These codes are the means by which power and ideology are
made to signify in particular discourses (Hall: 1973, 56).
Ideologies are the frames within which reality is shaped through discursive
apparatus of the existing order. The ideologies (hegemony), for Gramsci, are the constructs
of the ruling classes; he calls them “intellectuals” to enable the perpetuation of power over
the masses. Hegemony for Merriam Webster is defined as having a “preponderant influence
and authority”.
The different areas of social life appear to be mapped out into discursive domains,
hierarchically organized into dominant or preferred meanings (Hall: 1973, 57).
Language and media are the state’s ideological apparatuses that aim to create socially
constructed uniforms in hegemonic culture that destroy the individuality and pave way for
the assigned roles imposed by the dominant group. These uniforms pioneer discursive
spaces called public spheres around which individuals who have similar values congregate
to discuss their mutual interests. At first glance, these spheres can be seen as the signs of
democratic vision, but they are actually public prisons since democracy itself is a discursive
word created by the hegemonic culture.
The existing world is generated by the strategies of governments, corporations, and
other institutional bodies who produce things like maps that describe the city as a unified
whole. It is based on hegemonic and solipsistic understanding. Man like Sisyphus
relentlessly follows the paved roads which Gramsci’s intellectuals, the ruling classes, have
built. He is chained to Plato’s cave in which he believes the distorted images reflected on the
wall as reality itself. He becomes into his culturally created identity molded by the
hegemonic understanding like Venus at her mirror in Delacroix painting. The problem here
is man’s irresponsible cowardice for self-expression and inability to act. He can fall victim to
collective unconscious thought created by the powerful presence if he lets his will to be
manipulated. His fear not to express his ‘self’ puts him in a situation to hand over the
responsibility of conveying message to the ruling classes. But paradoxically, the ruling
classes to whom man yields his right for expression are dump and numb like the orator in
Ionesco’s The Chairs. This cowardice lies deeply into the core of humanity embodied in
Eliot’s Prufrock:
Do I dare?
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; (Eliot, 1915, line: 45,111)
The real question is whether he dares or not to act and absolve him of the culturally
created identity imprisoned in the dualistic order based on power relations, which kept
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evolutionary process stuck. The question is whether he dares to be Prince Hamlet who
uncovers the veil of secrecy; he dares to be like Dante who voyages down to inferno in order
to illuminate the dark passages of the unconscious, or he stays immobile by accepting his
role, which is pinned down to the wall of existing system. It is only a matter of question.
4. The Annihilation of Binary Logic and Dualism
...What interested me then [when he was writing "La dissémination" and "La mythologie
blanche," that is, in the late 60's], and that I am attempting to pursue along other lines
now, at the same time as a "general economy," a kind of general strategy of
deconstruction. The latter is to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of
metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, thereby
confirming it. Therefore we must proceed using a double gesture, according to a
unity that is both systematic and in itself divided, a double writing, that is, a writing
that is in and of itself multiple... On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of
overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical
philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-
vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy... To deconstruct that opposition, first of all, is
to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment.... [And on the other hand,] we must also
mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the
irruptive emergence of a new "concept," a concept that can no longer be, and never
could be, included in the previous regime (Derrida:1981, 41-42).
No surprise to see western philosophy and religion based on the binary opposition
theory in which the very existence depends on the other in the society. To put it simply,
binary opposition is the presence-absence dichotomy. Absence here means devalued presence
by the powerful other in the society. Presence occupies a position of dominance in Western
thought based on power relations. Depending on this, it always puts the other in the
periphery position. According to Jacques Derrida; meaning in the West is defined in terms of
binary oppositions, “a violent hierarchy” where “one of the two terms governs the other.”
This impedes the free flow of ideas that will align man with the evolutionary time. But it is
so deeply rooted that man has lost the organic unity, which is the essence of the evolutionary
process. T.S. Eliot calls it “dissociation of sensibility”. It is defined as the division in the two
sides of the psyche. In dualistic understanding based on power relations, this division
creates a conflict between two parts of the psyche. These two sides should be fused in order
to recover the decaying society out of which a new society will be born beyond our
revolutionary actions. This provides man with a perfect wholeness and sets him free from
the idolatrized ideas into the ocean of free flow of ideas. But the same question rises again:
Does man dare to act?
Deleuze and Guittari in their work called A Thousand Plateaus throw the existing
ideology based on the binary logic away. They believe that binary logic restricts free flow of
desire and shows changes as threats, thus inducing terror and violence in the society.
Binary Logic is thought to be the base of the world’s thought system. In other words,
one becomes two and then two becomes four. This dialectic mechanism is based on
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the duality. However, the removal of such kind of a border will become our central
point in. They render the interactions free without depending on any centre just like
the movements of the quarks in an atom particle (Deleuze and Guittari: 2008, 35)
The dichotomy of presence and absence based on power relations should
immediately be discarded to give way for evolution of mind and society through time.
5. Deculturilazation: Profanity, Not Deification of Ideas
Jung as well as Freud claim human mind bear the archaic remnants of the human
history. These are the primordial universal images, which lie deep within the unconscious.
Freud calls them a mass psyche; Jung calls it a collective psyche. As history goes on, these
archaic remnants turn into the burdens of the mind to prevent the individuals to bridge the
conscious and the unconscious. They turn into idols as we orbit around these remnants. The
thing is that man has built this, and now he slaves himself to these created idols what I call
them “diseased ideas”. These idols are so stick to the man’s skin that it becomes inseparable
like body to soul. These are the great impediments on the way to evolution of man and
society. They should be identified and rendered as ordinary things instead of being
idolatrized. These are the rotten potatoes of the mind that must immediately be cleared in
order to synchronize human evolution with time since man’s actions are frozen in time just
like the paintings on Grecian urn. Some steps must be taken to find the harmony between
our actions and time, which we have once lost.
Interactively dynamic relations should be developed to the good for the freedom of
expression in order to make a critical analysis of the power relations in the society. The main
focus should be on breaking off the bonds of the human relations from social roles and
stereotypes and to enable them to flow freely in the state that function in the fluid mind.
Deleuze and Guittari defend that evolutionary schemas should take place of the
hierarchal model of treeing and the descent.
Evolutionary schemas would no longer follow models of arborescent descent going
from the least to the most differentiated, but instead a rhizome operating
immediately in the heterogeneous and jumping from one already differentiated line
to another (Deleuze and Guittari: 2008, 31).
Evolutionary schemas have no centre and function in multiplicity and always in the middle
unlike the hierarchal model whose operations are accounted from the beginning and root-
tree system.
Adrienne Rich (2002) says in her poem Planetarium that “what we see we see and
seeing is changing. (lines 27-28)” One cannot escape from these ossified principles of such
kind of a hierarchal order unless he decentres his point of view and accept the fact that
everything is flowing. That is, he should wear the glasses of eternity. He should not be clung
to any truth permanently. One who wears the glasses of eternity realizes that one truth may
be untruth when it flows through the currents. What is important is to see the currents to
strengthen and to make contribution but not to weaken. Then one may create a harmony out
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of disharmony not basing on clashes but interactions between ideas. This interaction does
not need any beginning or source since it is constantly on the move. Thereby the direction of
water is not predetermined and prevents the deification of ideas. Thus, the events
incessantly flow rather than being stuck somewhere. As waves in the river make flowing
faster as well as making it lively, the multiplicity of events in the space of nomad thought
strengthens the infrastructure of the social order as well as gaining flexibility to the system
for rearrangement in the future. Thus letting our actions free from the chains of culture.
6. Pandemonium: Chaos, The Harmony of Formless Ideas
“Come with me.”
"Come with you? To Pandemonium? To the Void?
(Cassandra Clare: 2013, 112)
Chaos here should not be thought with the existing meaning. Chaos here means the
unconscious mind, which is not moulded by any frame or the formless, Dionysian self
behind the mirror through which one sees the reflection of the culturally created identity or
Apollonian self. How can ‘self’ be redeemed if it has been imbued with deeply rooted idols
throughout the history? As long as ideas are idolatrized or deified in the society, there will
be viruses and antiviruses in the matrix, which in turn lead people to orbit around idols.
Our society should be the body without organs through which the blood flows freely
without any obstacle. Decentralized society is the one without its institutions and with its
mobile boundaries allowing the thoughts, ideas and changes to adapt easily. This is the best
possible way to create harmony out of different melodies.
7. Conclusion
Evolution begins in mind not in the physical world. Man has lost the harmony between
their actions and time. He is stuck in time because of the blocks he has happily built through
time. He is the prisoner of the system. He is like Sisyphus who is imprisoned in the vicious
circle of his punishment. He is the citizen of everyday life who walks in the paved roads,
which are built according to the strategies drawn by the existing order. The question never
changes: Does he dare to walk in the dark paths of unconscious for the maturity and
evolution of mind, which has long been blunted and washed by ignorance or in already
trodden paths of humanity which leads to repetitive existence?
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (Robert Frost: 1916, lines: 24-25)
Evolution is a process, which is moulded by knowledge and patience through time. In doing
so, the citizens should absolve themselves of cultural representations and set out to voyage
in order to face what is behind the mirror or whether there is something behind the mirror or
not. Calling for action to revolutionize the system resembles to plucking the raw fruit from
its branch before its time has come. When it gets mature enough through time, the citizens
will see that the fruit will already fall from its branch by itself. The ideas will flourish
spontaneously giving way for the social evolution. What makes the difference is to dare and
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to become Hamlet and Dante but not Prufrock who symbolizes the irresponsible cowardice
of man. So the question is “Do you dare...?”
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Buchanan, Ian. Michel de Certeau (2000): Cultural Theorist. Sage Press. (pp. 10-30)
Clare, Cassandra (2013): The Rise of Hotel Dumort. The Bane Chronicles ; Book 5. (pp. 112)
Deleuze, Gillez; Felix Guattari (2008): A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism andSchizophrenia:
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