4. IDEA FOR A UNIVERSAL HISTORY
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
4. IDEA FOR A UNIVERSAL HISTORY |
|||
| 4.3.1 Macro-action And Micro-action | ||||
|
Eonic determination and free action In the previous editions of the text, this distinction of macro-action and micro-action was referred to as that between ‘eonic determination’ and ‘free action’. We will use both terminologies. One way to distinguish history and evolution might lie just here, by considering the transition from passive to active organism, from behavior to free (ambient or locomotive) action, in the ambiguity of the term ‘free’. Perhaps if man is free then evolution ends and history begins, if this is our choice of definition. Or, if he is not free, his evolution continues, and the term ‘history’ is so far another term for this process. This distinction returns something of fundamental importance to our conceptions of evolution, levels of performance in the potential to act in differing modes. Darwinism tends to assume that the most arbitrary action, as long as it satisfies ‘survival of the fittest’, is the measure of evolutionary outcome. But we can see that real evolution requires as much the achievement of higher levels of qualitative action, irregardless of the ‘survival of the fittest’ test. If qualitative action fails, the system waits until the job is done right. There is no other possibility in many cases, democracy is not monarchy. And this distinction of eonic determination and free action suggests that some outcomes in our history, even if they are the ones to survive, might be the ‘wrong’ outcomes.
System and Individual This seeming
paradox of intermittent or ‘eonic’ determination seems obscure, but we reckon
with it by analogy in many situations, e.g. the ‘free action’ of soldiers and
the ‘system action’ generated from Central HQ in discrete intervals of
direction. Another example might be the relation of a business to investors. The
investor creates potential but doesn’t execute the ‘free action’ of the business
firm. And we always remain free up to a point within that context. Here,
however, we have no knowledge of the existence of this metaphorical HQ, and
simply see the sequence of ‘determinations’ that have emerged within our free
activity. In general, ‘free action’ in an economy is related to some ‘economic
determination’, e.g. cycles of boom and bust. Another example might be
‘interpretation of an improvisational drama’, or a play with a full script. The
determination of the plot is given over to the free action of the actor. It is
worth noting the resemblance to ‘development under a war footing’. Things often
show rapid relative transformation during war periods, e.g. radar. They have a
prior source and a continuous stream history, but a discontinuous interval of
speed up.
Democracy
and ‘free action’
Our model faithfully enforces the arcane distinction of emergentist
democracy (as ‘eonic evolution’) under ‘eonic determination’ and democracy as
‘free action’. This unexpected distinction complicates our usage of democracy,
but Lo and Behold, once we look we see a clear necessity for the distinction:
look at the source of democracy and
then follow its realization. Twice, we
will see, it appears near a ‘divide’, at the end of a transition, and then
proceeds to its outcome, in the first instance considerable confusion. Note that
the act of generating democracy and its realization are thus two different
things, a fact that Americans always take into account as they nervously reckon
with the foundational moment and any deviation from that.
The action of a flare The most
elusive (and probably misleading) example one could give is the action of a
flare on a battlefield. In the dark, nothing happens. In the presence of light,
free action sequences start up, or pick up where they left off, and continue for
the duration, lapsing into inaction again in the burnout of the flare. These
action sequences are improvised, yet show central determination of some kind, or
maybe not, deserters. The light does nothing, yet everything is done in its
presence. Such analogies have their dangers. If these terms are too abstract simply think of the question, ‘Does man make himself?’ in relation to the turning points of history. The difficulty is that we are inside evolution, and must both ‘evolve’, and emerge from evolution, to understand it. The most we can manage are episodes or bursts of ‘freedom as self-consciousness’. And even this shows some kind of ‘evolutionary determination’, by and large, so far. Note: ‘Microevolution’? Note that history is embedded in evolution by this definition, and could be taken as the ‘microevolution’ to accompany ‘macroevolution’. Note further that ‘microevolution’ is NOT therefore survival of the fittest, but the degree of self-consciousness as human action in history. We see why Darwinism is colliding with religion, whose historic action is the ‘counsel’ to acts of will as self-consciousness. The danger of replacing this with a theory like Darwinism is the degradation of general free action. |
||||