One question that should trouble most reading this is why is there such a disjunct or severe bifurcation between Kant’s unique and remarkable critiques and the miasma of his political philosophy. Perhaps, surprising as it seems, it is due to his primarily bourgeois sensibilities; certainly his political ideas are reactionary in the extreme. Yet, this is the same Immanuel Kant who produced the tremendous critiques which showcase that jewel in the crown of the trilogy -- the Critique of Practical Reason (CP).

The second critique, CP, is in essence the central work which both the first and third critiques are anchored on. If it was not for the issue of morality, it can be arguably said that Kant would not have produced the critiques as we know them for a crucial purpose of his project was to show that we can indeed have meaningful notions of the good and act that out, without being accused of metaphysical speculation or rendered impotent through scepticism. And importantly, we do not need the dogmatism of religious zealots to inform us of what is the right thing to do; our practical reason takes care of that and it is a driving force in defining us as humans.

This second part looks at how practical reason shapes Kant’s moral constructivism and is the basis of his political constructivism which runs counter to his political theory. In other words, Kant’s political reason is that which is morally driven.   

The moral basis of things

Just as Kant was adamant on providing certainty in knowledge in CR through his transcendental philosophy, he was determined to  provide reliable grounds for doing the right thing in the form of the categorical imperative, for instance. But it is not the categorical imperative as much as the moral force itself that helps create one’s reality which is at the heart of CP; it is also what underwrites the egalitarian and empowering principles of Kant's philosophical project. These ideas salvage Kant’s reputation from the harshness of his political thinking to provide, through extrapolation, what can be called his political reason.  

Early on in the CP Kant says,

In practical philosophy, which has to do only with the grounds of determination of the will, the principles which a man makes for himself are not laws by which he is inexorably bound, because reason, in practice, has to do with a subject and especially with his faculty of desire…The practical rule is always a product of reason, because it prescribes action as a means to an effect which is its purpose...It is a rule characterized by an “ought” which expresses the objective necessitation of the act and indicates that, if reason completely determined the will, the action would without exception take place according to the rule. (CP 20)    

What Kant is saying is that the will is influenced by practical reason and that is the same as free will reflective of human freedom. Man is not bound by a law by which he now must follow no matter what, but has the choice to do what is right from his own reason and if he does so it will be for the highest good of all as a duty. The moral choice comes from within and is not imposed from without: This is crucial in Kant.

Kant tries to clarify this a little later -- “But for reason to give law it is required that reason need presuppose only itself, because the rule is objectively and universally valid only when it holds without any contingent subjective conditions which differentiate one rational being from another.” (CP 21) Here Kant implies that there is no personal point of view or subjectivist perspective in producing a moral imperative for oneself. For a moral imperative is validated through practical reason which exists in each person, and that in turn is based on a moral grounding of each individual from which those imperatives and practical reason emanate; and in this way the imperatives can be regarded as universal: So we can expect that others can have similar moral imperatives and that they can understand where our own comes from. This is not an imposition of an external law or an internal one, but an imperative based on our free will which we make into a duty for ourselves without any desire for external rewards or recognition.  

We further learn from Kant,

It would be better to maintain that there are no practical laws, which must have an objective and not just subjective necessity and which must be known a priori by reason instead of by experience, no matter how empirically universal. Even the rules of uniform phenomena are denominated natural laws (for example, mechanical laws) only if we really can understand them a priori…Only in the case of subjective practical principles is it expressly made a condition that not objective but subjective conditions of choice must underlie them, and hence that they must be represented always as mere maxims and never as practical laws. (CP 27)        

Kant hearkens to the first critique on how laws are generated based on synthetic a priori conceptions and why this does not apply to moral imperatives. The ideas of the former are constitutive and regulative, whereas the latter are directive/directing in how to act. The moral imperative is not a law in that it has a way of getting agreement on its validity because it has empirical backing or can be accepted as a theoretical construct. Its force comes from its subjective-universal applicability which does not qualify it as some universal law, but rather as a maxim which one uses that can be accepted by others on a subjective-universal ground that applies to everyone. When that is used as the basis for a shared moral imperative then its force is guaranteed in a way by it not having a determinate end like the happiness of the individual or mankind. Rather the moral imperative is to ensure that we are worthy of happiness: This is what gives it objectivity from the subjective-universal ground of the will. This is central to a lot that follows and is one of Kant’s great insights.

We then reach one of the central ideas in Kant, on the links between freedom, the will and morality (Kant’s italics in all quotes):

The question now is whether our knowledge of the unconditionally practical takes its inception from freedom or from the practical law. It cannot start from freedom, for this we can neither know immediately, since our first concept of it is negative, nor infer from experience, since experience reveals only the law of appearances and consequently the mechanism of nature, the direct opposite of freedom. It is therefore the moral law, of which we become immediately conscious as soon as we construct maxims for the will, which first presents itself to us; and, since reason exhibits it as a ground of determination which is completely independent of and not to be outweighed by any sensuous condition, it is the moral law which leads directly to the concept of freedom. (CP 30).   

To Kant our knowledge of freedom comes from the practical law or moral law. We cannot understand this from the world of appearances but from the exercise of our will and freedom to choose against what the sensuous or natural world’s restrictions pose on us. For instance, the physical restrictions of the world and dangers it can bring, together with a sense of limitation that one has to struggle to survive, goes against the grain of the moral law which can make us choose -- as an act of will – freedom; or that which opposes self-interestedness (and sometimes, even survival).

Kant develops this idea further by saying that the (moral) will is pure will as there is no precedence for it in the realm of the phenomenal world as understood by natural law. It is one of a kind and can be understood as grounded on morality itself. The moral law seems to operate like a natural law but does not have the same result in that it is not a reflection of phenomena happening in the world and rationalizing causes for it. Yet, the moral law operates on the basis of generating a system of law like the natural one but is actually in the form of a maxim that a person can follow.

So Kant says,

Therefore, it is at least not impossible to conceive of a law that alone serves the purpose of the subjective form of principles and yet is a ground of determination by virtue of the objective form of a law in general. The consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason, since one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of reason, such as the consciousness of freedom…and since it forces itself upon us as a synthetic proposition a priori based on no pure or empirical intuition. It would be analytic if the freedom of the will were presupposed, but for this, as a positive concept, an intellectual intuition would be needed, and here we cannot assume it…

Pure reason alone is practical of itself, and it gives (to man) a universal law, which we call the moral law. (CP 31)

Kant is looking for a certain ground from which to launch the moral law and he finds it in pure reason. From this we can have certainty and communicate it to others and aim to create moral solutions to situations because we have not only the common practical grounds of reason itself, but we can project this in the form of a universal law in general (the awareness of which when generated in this manner is a fact of reason). But moral laws are not universal laws like natural ones; though they have universality due to their form which is similar to natural ones. Kant is interested in finding how we can provide certainty to moral ideas and have a basis for commonality in expressing them by showing the subjective-objective content-form they have; this also allows for universality and acceptability among peoples.

Furthermore, the idea of heteronomy (relying on something external to us) is opposed to autonomy (relying on something within us), and the latter is a distinctive feature in the expression of free will. This is an important idea that will provide the basis for further examining and recuperating from the damaging impact of Kant’s political ideas. Our man further says,

The autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of the duties conforming to them; heteronomy of choice…not only does not establish any obligation but is opposed to the principle of obligation and to the morality of the will.

The sole principle of morality consists in independence from all material of the law…and in the accompanying determination of choice by the mere form of giving universal law which a maxim must be capable of having. That independence…is freedom in the negative sense, while this intrinsic legislation of pure and thus practical reason is freedom in the positive sense. Therefore, the moral law expresses nothing else than the autonomy of pure practical reason, i.e., freedom. This autonomy of freedom is itself the formal condition of all maxims, under which alone they can all agree with the supreme practical law. (CP 33-34)       

Free will and the ability to choose is the idea behind moral laws and the duties it brings and it is centred within us; this makes us autonomous beings. Relying on something external to guide us and give us meaning and direction is to lose autonomy and provides a way out of moral responsibility and the obligation it brings.

The object of the moral law is the desire to do something, but we must not be a slave to that or be obsessed with an end goal to determine what is the right thing to do as it must be done as a universal principle as opposed to an end goal everyone is legislated to follow. The format of a law for our maxims shows us that it is universal and independent, but the positive aspect of our freedom comes from the obligation we give ourselves to do what is right irrespective of the impact on our comfort zones. This is what makes us free individuals, that is, the ability to break free from what constrains us. 

Then the lines that dive deeper into Kant’s idea on the connection between the supersensuous noumenon and the phenonmenal world:

The sensuous nature of rational beings in general is their existence under empirically conditioned laws, and therefore…heteronomy. The supersensuous nature of the same beings…is their existence according to laws which are independent of all empirical conditions and which therefore belong to the autonomy of pure reason. And since the laws…are practical laws, supersensuous nature…is nothing else than nature under the autonomy of the pure practical reason. The law of this autonomy is the moral law, and it, therefore, is the fundamental law of supersensuous nature and of a pure world of the understanding, whose counterpart must exist in the world of sense without interfering with the laws of the latter… (CP 43)    

Kant merges the idea of the laws of phenomena that come from reason which explain the conditional world we live in as experienced empirically with that of the seemingly unconditional world of the noumenon, as grasped and given intelligibility by practical reason. Only the latter can give an understanding of the noumenal world which natural laws cannot; and the natural world can be understood better via the underlying moral laws of practical reason which are an expression of our autonomy. The world of seeming dependence on empirical changes is underpinned by the unchanging world of freedom and morality which are direct aspects of the noumenon. Therefore, Kant’s vision of the world and the universe is a moral one.

This central idea in Kant’s thinking is further developed:

For, in fact, the moral law ideally transfers us into a nature in which reason would bring forth the highest good were it accompanied by sufficient physical capacities; and it determines our will to confer on the sensuous world the form of a system of rational beings. The least attention to ourself shows that this Idea really stands as a model for the determination of our will. (CP 43)   

It seems that Kant is saying that we can shape the world we live in, and therefore create our destiny, via expressing our freedom as moral beings for the highest good of all and this could be supported by the physical world under the right conditions. This reality which can be manifested as a moral expression of ourselves is a noumenal expression translating itself into phenomenal expression. This implies that with force of the moral law we can co-create the world we live in. It is not that we end up changing the so-called law of gravity as such, but that we change the world in a way that positively reflects our stewardship of life and the environment of the planet, through creating and sustaining the appropriate socio-economic structures.

Kant goes on to develop another of the central themes of his philosophy which forms the basis for his moral constructivism: It is not the idea of good and evil that is the datum for the moral law but the latter that provides the source for such notions. And he goes on to expand on this,

This remark, which refers only to the method of the deepest moral investigations, is important. It explains once and for all the reasons which occasion all the confusions of philosophers concerning the supreme principle of morals…Whether they placed this object of pleasure, which was to deliver the supreme concept of good, in happiness, or in perfection, in moral feeling, or in the will of God – their fundamental principle was always heteronomy, and they came inevitably to empirical conditions for a moral law. (CP 64)

Kant points out that to place the source of the highest good and the joy it may bring in a source external to oneself inevitably results in surrendering our freedom to an external law, condition or force. Heteronomy involves empirical evidence and natural law explanations to ascertain the good it generates for a person. This would be a subreption. The moral law is not only a priori and has no basis in the natural world nor metaphysical speculation, but it comes from within and thereby signals our autonomy and guarantees the certitude of the moral drive.

The idea of co-creation of reality is expanded by Kant when he says that morality as expressed via the practical law is geared towards the highest good of all, and so what we work towards in that construction of a society for everyone’s good is such that it does so for the welfare of all. This does not, however, preclude taking challenging decisions that could place us in jeopardy when, for instance, speaking truth to power. Whatever the consequence to ourselves, we will do what is right for the welfare/highest good of others; for the end goal is not the happiness of others so much as doing what makes us worthy of happiness and in that respect, we would add to the happiness of ourselves and others. (CP 69-70, 93)

The moral law is the ground from which the highest good commences. It may seem circular but there is hardly a way out for Kant on this score in that the drive and source of the highest good is itself, so it is directing in nature but not directed towards a specific goal as that would be the way the natural laws would work which are empirically/verification oriented and thereby heteronomous. (CP 109-110)

These central Kantian ideas take fuller form when expanded into how the practical will avoids the dual dilemma of empiricism and mysticism; this is also what Kant was avoiding when he wrote the CR. When the motivation and goal of our actions are our comfort and happiness instead of doing what is right, then we are guilty of seeking validation for our acts in the form of empiricism; this would fit utilitarian doctrines and is heteronomous. This would also entail seeking a reward in doing something to gain satisfaction rather than an inner motivation that would reflect one’s conscience.

Similarly, to do something based on ‘God’s will’ is not only to make metaphysical assumptions according to Kant, but to dive into mysticism/the transcendent and thus rely on divine edict’s outside of oneself; this too is to indulge in heteronomy. Our agency, free will and autonomy is denied unless we rely on our moral judgement and our capacity for this based on our will and practical reason: This is the building block for our empowerment. We are “indeed legislative members of a moral realm which is possible through freedom and which is presented to us as an object of respect by practical reason.” (CP 82) Our will towards the highest good helps us co-create a moral realm as the expression of our freedom as autonomous beings.

Yet, Kant makes the point that it is empiricism that is more worrying than the mystical. It is looking for results that can be measured to secure one’s justification for doing something that is a greater distraction for our moral disposition. He says “that empiricism is far more dangerous than all mystical enthusiasm” (CP 71) as its apparent immediacy is always a compelling factor. We are normally trapped within the exigencies of physical issues that tend to cloud the need to rely on moral judgement. This is why Kant’s political ideas contradict what his moral thought gives us (which is the ground of his critical philosophy) -- that expediency and its empirical seduction cannot triumph over the moral will of one’s conscience which is our supreme human trait.

A core aspect of Kant’s practical reason would resonate with some revolutionary activists:

It follows of itself that, in the order of ends, man (and every rational being) is an end in himself, i.e., he is never to be used merely as a means for someone (even for God) without at the same time being himself an end, and that humanity in our person must itself be holy to us, and it is only on account of this and in agreement with this that anything can be called holy. (CP 131-132)  

This is the kind of spiritual force that is usually found simmering at the heart of revolutionary thought where morality, purpose and action fuse into a whole without external incentive other than the drive for self realization for the highest good of all. True, sometimes this is mired in the goal of ridding a country of a dictatorship or oppressive regime, and that may seem heteronomous. But an unadulterated revolutionary motivation would see that no man is a commodity, and that each person is a free and autonomous being beyond measurement: For our essence is spiritual and thereby Immeasurable.

Bringing it together

A brief survey of the three critiques reveals that the first one looks at theoretical or speculative reason, what it is, and how we create knowledge. The CR looks at how we claim certainty in knowledge rather than explain what it is we exactly know. The CP looks at the free will, freedom, practical reason and their moral grounding. This in turn gives us autonomy and provides certainty in our moral claims and actions. The third critique (CJ), which is not looked at here, is about how we communicate in relation to nature, beauty, the sublime and art. It allows us to make claims about what is beautiful which though it may be subjective, still allows us to expect universal understanding from others on this. The CJ also examines issues related to the moral dimension which is the essence of Kant’s thinking.

The CR shows that we project what we know and that much of the world is understood by us a priori from the way human consciousness is ‘wired’ or ‘designed’. The CR sets the base for practical reason which goes on to show in CP, that we co-create moral realms through not only categorical imperatives but that the moral dimension is what makes the world intelligible to us: It fuses the noumenal basis of reason into understanding things in a holistic and coherent manner. So we project our moral creations and that shapes our world. This is Kant’s projection of empowerment and egalitarianism of each individual as they express themselves as free agents who can decide their destiny.

The fact of reason makes us aware of the intrinsic connection, or different side of the same coin aspect, of speculative reason and practical reason. And when we look at what is termed here Kant’s political reason we are looking at another dimension of Kant’s ideas that is, however, in contradistinction to his political thinking. Political reason expresses itself via synthetic a priori political theorizing that appropriately and effectively replaces and projects a viable set of political ideas for Kant.

Earlier it was mentioned that Kant’s subreption occurred when he made moral claims from his political ones, and the combined fetishized notions of them slipped into transcendentalism and transcendence: Because the moral drive has been hegemonised by the political one of expedience and Rightism/legalism. And republicanism, constitutionalism, and Rightism/legalism are treated as transcendent goals or Ideals to be realized and used to justify a reactionary status quo. We understand political reason to be underwritten by moral drives and practical reason (which also underpin pure reason and thereby theoretical/speculative reason).

Thus, political theories would be fused with moral drives as an expression of the moral ground. They are not hegemonised by morality but made intelligible solely by morality just as the workings and resultant products of reason itself are intelligible due to its practical essence.

Therefore, political reason gives proper and cogent expression to Kant’s political philosophy. It is also fused with practical reason -- which is what ultimately anchors his critiques and overall philosophical project. In other words, the accurate way to understand Kant’s political ideas is to apply them as moral constructs.

The material for Kant’s political theory would also be synthetic a priori in that there are notions of democracy, general will, social contract, equality, public good etc which are a priori constructs. These are then formulated into theories which would support ideas of republicanism (as various shades of democracy), authoritarianism, totalitarianism, socialism, anarchism, and all that would be termed radical political thinking. When we try to work this out empirically it is called politics and academically, political science. So another way to put it is that Kant’s political reason is the expression of a synthetic a priori projection of theoretical constructs aligned with the moral drive.

We could say that pure reason has the dimensions of practical reason (that underlies it), theoretical/speculative reason, and political reason. The latter can be expressed as theoretical constructs, and itself is an expression of practical reason and of the moral essence grounding it.

It can also be said that Kant’s republicanism, legalism, Right-ism and constitutionalism, as well as his fixation with a hierarchical system of government is a product of his theorizing which he attempts to verify with examples from his time and experience. These are manifestations of transcendental thinking which are used to explain and rationalize politics, traditional societal structures and forms of control. That Kant’s political ideas are reactionary in the extreme and even harsh in many aspects can only be speculatively said to be the result of his bourgeois attitudes and existence, and from biographical information that in his later years he conformed to authority; though this may have also been his way of showing that he was a good citizen of his land.

The problem starts when he takes his political theorizing to logical extremes, wherein the transcendental logic used to draw conclusions in a linear fashion finally produces puerile statements as seen where whatever good he attempts to rationalize through stability leads to despotism. Legal or constitutional despotism is still despotism; these are subtleties lost on the later Kant whose sharpness of mind is blunted by a form of worship of authority, and fetishized logicism.

It becomes problematic and painfully embarrassing when Kant facilely tries to combine his profound moral thinking with the effrontery of his politics. But we now can see the contradiction is severe for his entire moral philosophy is at odds with his political theory in that it is the former which is an expression of the spiritual in man, and the assertion of his freedom in contrast to being a driveling and sniveling slave to authority.

We need to extrapolate Kant’s ideas and see that the proper application of his practical reason to political reason can add to clarity in the form of the concept of practical political reason. Hence, we grasp the emphasis that the intelligibility granted to political reason comes from the moral dimension espoused as practical political reason (PPR). Through the term PPR it is easier to see that it is our moral grounding that determines our political thinking and thereby our political theories and actions. This means we have political theories that are projected from the morally grounded ideas of freedom, justice, egalitarianism, and wealth sharing and distribution for the highest good of all. So PPR would take us away from Kant’s reactionary bombast and towards uncharted territories in that it is an expression of our creative powers to meet challenges and forge the society we want.

Kant’s moral constructivism would include John Rawls’s notion of it, but it is developed here as people co-creating their own moral realm and society. As moral agents we create a moral realm, or world, made intelligible and free from the constraints that may be imposed by the phenomenal world; but also recognizing the pragmatic need to adapt to its physical constructs. Yet, the phenomenal world can also be influenced and shaped by the moral co-creation of human beings, as societal structures and phenomena can be changed to reflect moral consciousness.

Therefore, through each person via categorical imperatives and the exercise of their autonomy and free will grounded in morality we co-create a just and fair society that allows for the betterment of all and the highest realization of human potential. This is hardly utopia but what can be created when PPR is in force. It is just that we have not really given this a proper go yet.

This is where we see the critical assimilation and fusion of the ideas discussed into a new paradigm. The political constructivism of Kant veers away from that of Rawls. We will extend and synthetically a priori construct ideas that grow from Kant’s PPR and see how this also tends to fit and explain some radical political theories. The critical perspective taken from PPR will show that Kant’s ideas would dovetail with that of Marx and certain anarchist thinkers. It would also give clarity to some aspects of radical thought in the 20^th century and into our time as well, and open up space for further theorizing.

Kant’s political heteronomy

Based on the political ideas of republicanism, legalism and constitutionalism grounded on reactionary defence of the status quo, it is hard to see even superficially how Kant’s thinking here could bring forth autonomy. In fact, his entire political edifice rests on not only obedience to laws but of unquestioning acceptance of them. It makes a mockery of his critical philosophy. His political ideas are heteronomous in that they insist that people need external force, constructs and guidance in behaving themselves and doing what is right, and this can be further detected through Kant’s insistence that:

• There is a hierarchy that must be obeyed
• Without laws man is uncontrollable and cannot regulate or discipline himself at all
• That humans cannot be trusted to rely on morality and need external coercion to be good
• The contradictory but convenient conflation of obedience to laws made by man and duty to moral laws that supposedly come from within, and so the supervenience of external laws over internal imperatives  
• That only heads of state and the state apparatus can dictate what is best for everyone
• That only legislators and members of the state apparatus know what is best for everyone
• That strict linearity of logical extremism is the answer to the world’s problems
• Statism and the fetishization of its laws lead to a kind of transcendentalism that transmutes into transcendence and thereby mysticism
• Even unjust social contracts must be obeyed for the sake of obeying statist constricting notions which substitute inner motivation for external compulsion, such that everyone is forced into agreeing; it is a matter of expedience and what keeps one’s head intact instead of removal by Statism and Authority
• There can be no form of resistance or rebellion even if it is morally driven as all must be subject to obeisance to statist imposition of laws
• That ideas of a social contract are a priori and therefore a good thing as implicitly all such ideas are
• A fatalistic approach is needed and one accepts one’s lot in life, and injustice and tyranny are justified by a set of legal documents

Even the form of a law, as Kant explains in CP, provides a restraining influence on moral drives which are best expressed as maxims that are generated from the moral grounds of the free will of each person. So laws as such are heteronomous and do not encourage moral growth and progress due to their inherently stifling/restrictive nature.

Interestingly, in the CR the natural laws produced via synthetic a priori speculation help give the basis for knowledge and making epistemic claims about the world. However, this approach is anathema for practical reason which seeks discipline from moral expression of the individual that can be harnessed as an imperative force for societal co-creation by people. The heteronomous nature of laws is what distinguishes it from practical reason and its moral constructs.    

Kant’s political autonomy

The political autonomy of Kant is fused, of course, with his moral imperatives. Practical reason, the essence of pure reason, expresses itself in what we ought to do to be worthy of happiness as we avoid expediency and self serving interests at the expense of others. So anyone acting from reason as such would do so with moral interests in mind. Thus, based on the earlier discussion, Kant’s political autonomy would maintain that:

• Citizens and those representing them would do what is concomitant with the moral drive
• All members of a state or society would act on the moral imperatives and maxims that guide them irrespective of consequences (would be congruent to highest good of all)
• Doing what is right and not what is expedient is an act of freedom and the expression of our free will as autonomous beings
• The essence of humanity is freedom and this means freeing oneself from constraining constructs and laws that are inevitably heteronomous
• In order to be free we will live in a manner that keeps us in balance and as far as possible unshackled from heteronomous limitations
• To act reasonably and be as free as possible from the physical limitations of the phenomenal world, as well as make our lives intelligible, we must act morally always
• Yet the physical world can be changed to suit our moral force if we all act together as representatives of the supersensuous source of things, or noumena, which further expresses itself through free will and its moral grounding 
• We will all act and create what are the right, just and compassionate socio-economic-political structures as they are an expression of our moral centre as rational beings, and this is how moral imperatives imprint themselves on our co-created world
• We create what is for the highest good of all and this emanates from the moral centre of the universe which is also anchored within us (just as we are centred within it)
• What we believe from our free will to be right and for the highest good of everyone should be the societal and economic processes we must abide by and develop
• We are moral legislators of our world and we decide what is best for ourselves and our society from that which comes from our moral consciousness
• We are therefore empowered beings who do not and should not rely on external laws and incentives to divert us from expressing ourselves as members of an empowered society and world
• Human beings are an end in themselves and are of spiritual import that makes us and our moral expression beyond measure; we are indeed Immeasurable
• Fear must not be a stumbling block in realizing the human (noumenal/supersensuous) ideal of realistically living out our moral expressions through better lives and a better world for all

All this entails radical theorizing which tells us that from the root cause of what makes us humans grounded in morality, we would eschew those political institutions and their representatives, politicos, the State and its apparatus misaligned to the moral ground; these are but the epitome of restriction and heteronomy. As Kant says in the CP quote above, heteronomy is “…opposed to the principle of obligation and to the morality of the will” and so anything that is forced on us relieves us of any duty or obligation to it, as it is against morality itself. For we should only obey what we believe to be right for the highest good of all, and these are maxims taken without compromise and are an undiluted expression of the supersensuous in its moral grounding in the world.

To continue with the old paradigm that survives today in its form of feudalism-capitalism is the high end of heteronomy in our world. It needs to be resisted and dismantled as the direct expression of our autonomy. And our autonomy is the source of radical thinking and the ideas that coalesce from it – that is, the imperatives and maxims that manifest through PPR to create the forms, processes and models of distributive justice that are congruent to our moral centre as human beings.

Practical political constructivism

So where does all this leave us? If we extrapolate Kant’s political constructivism we would see that defying reactionary tendencies, as well as authoritarianism, totalitarianism, dictatorships, fascism and feudalism (and the capitalism linked to it) are the basics his PPR would entail. It would also, as a positive thesis, evoke ideas of egalitarianism, sense of justice and fairness, compassion, rectitude, selfless service; speaking, standing and acting out one’s truth and showing moral courage in the face of adversity, danger and death. Kantian PPR would, therefore, fit with radical political theorizing.

All this would be a synthetic a priori extension and creation of Kant’s PPR via his practical political constructivism, or Kantian political constructivism/Kantian constructivism.

It seems that political theories and ideas that would appear a natural fit generated from Kantian constructivism would be socialism, communism and its variants (e.g. Marxism-Leninism), anarchism and various other combinations emanating from the creative energies of people transfused with practical reason. Thus, it can be said accurately that the political trend and constructivism that would naturally evolve from Kantian ideas would be those that could be broadly defined as that of a social economy. It is about empowered people and communities.

A social economy would thereby have characteristics that would include communities based on egalitarian principles which promote empowerment of the individual and the group. There would be active citizen participation in policy creation of a society or community. Representatives elected, where deemed necessary, would be indeed representatives of people and not politicians (whose participation in politics is usually a career option). What would be needed is PPR expressed in the formulation of Green and people friendly solutions and policies that do not need Statism and its repressive representatives, apparatus and laws. A social economy would diverge from all forms of heteronomy and abide by autonomy.

The obvious objection is how could an empowered society be possible, when man leads a Hobbesian life of nastiness. Well, heteronomy has been the perennial so-called solution that has been tried in all its extreme forms and the results have been catastrophic: It is a wonder we still exits as a species. It is a greater wonder that the planet hasn’t died on us. The alternative is to try and develop autonomy as far as is humanly possible. It can be tried in a transition phase from the current restrictive paradigm of heteronomous Statism and the corruption it brings, where everyone is either rewarded/bought through money or the threat of punishment.

This idea of radical empowerment and that we can create the world of our choice is shown in these words of Kant as mentioned earlier, that we can “…confer on the sensuous world the form of a system of rational beings. The least attention to ourself shows that this Idea really stands as a model for the determination of our will.” And so as rational beings we would strive for a moral society and this would be the ideal and the model we would naturally work towards in that we do not have the goal of a specific society which then may place ideological (heteronomous) restrictions on what we need to do.

Instead, we work towards our social economy and moral realm in the way that it will be what it is meant to be so as to make us worthy of happiness in serving the highest good of all life and the planet. This would then be an assertion of our autonomy and free will grounded on morality that is a defining characteristic of being human. This we achieve through PPR and the political constructivism it entails.

An example would be Marx and Engels's idea of Communism. They call it a goal but it is actually an open ended ideal which is the receptacle of our wishes for the highest good of all. To attempt to define it not only makes it sound utopian, but sets it as a goal to work towards and that makes it heteronomous. That is why, aiming for a specific goal can be damaging to the process in which we strive to attain it. What happens is that we insist on empirical validity in the forms of fixed measurements and specific structures/outcomes to be in place (that becomes the goal in itself) to prove realization of the goal; and people and resources become a means to an end. We sneak in utilitarianism even without intending to.

This does not imply that no form of measurement be used at all within the process of things, as it would be impractical and a block to moving forward. But it does imply that having an end goal that in itself must be measurable and used as the specific set of parameters to decide that the said goal has been achieved, is heteronomous and ultimately self-defeating; and it is damaging to moral evolution and autonomous expression along the way.

It is no wonder that the quest for creating a so-called ‘Communist state’ (a self-contradictory notion) has ended up in disaster. It is also not surprising that Marx and Engels, among others, could never with much clarity describe their exact vision of Communism as it is not meant to be a specific entity to be realized. Rather, it is a term that can be used to describe the use of PPR and Kantian constructivism as an expression of autonomy to do what is right by people in co-creating what is for the highest good of all. It is a never ending process of growth and evolution. The only end goal is to keep doing what is for the highest good of all; it is, therefore, practical reason in action (or PPR in this case) – for it is directing/directive in nature and not constitutive or regulative.

Due to the constructivist nature of this process of PPR, the ground activities of people based on moral imperatives, will feed up into the form of formulating workable socio-economic- political principles that are evolving; and that will ensure the ideas adopted are suitable for people to use so as to realize in the most pragmatic manner that which is for the highest good of all. Therefore, the entire process is grounded in what can be achieved and parameters are stretched as the moral drive shapes the way we choose to lead our lives in the world. This process of ground up adjustment of principles to be used to enact our co-created social economy would be called reflective equilibrium by Rawls. And this would apply to Kantian constructivism as well. 

So the co-created moral realm and society of Kantian constructivism demands nothing less than trying to create a realistic utopia and thereby work towards viable and feasible results. This is nothing to do with some ‘do-gooder’ altruism but rather taking the road rarely travelled, and finding our way forward as a species in an attempt to create a new earth. We will need to not only have collaboration between ourselves and various communities, but with other states-in-transition that work towards trans-communal cooperation and assistance.

This transnational group or community of people is akin to Kant’s transcendental idea of a ‘state of peoples’ mentioned earlier. Such a transnational community in its coagulating form will be the driving force of a state-in-transition. The latter is an evolutionary process that will see it move into the dismantling as such, or ‘vanishing/withering away’, of the state and its apparatus; the obverse of which would be the firming up of transnational communities as a social group unit of peoples. This would form the bedrock of radical political ideas some of which we can better appreciate in our moment in history, as they are manifested via the shifting tectonics of change occurring in the Middle East, Europe and as evinced by the Occupy movement in the US.

As for states-in-transition (towards an empowered society/community), the sharing of newly developing technology and non-monetary trade will assist and move us out of trade imbalances (debt forgiveness is a given). Stabilised currencies pegged to precious metals and the use of complementary currencies can assist transition societies towards constructing from the ground up what we want ourselves, communities and world to be. We would also have to channel resources towards good people coming out with the right ideas to solve our problems through citizen assemblies, work/idea groups and legislation that reflect our moral drives. Societal legislation will reflect autonomy and that can be changed not due to expediency but what is deemed to be right in our evolutionary process of growth as moral beings in a moral-centric universe.

And Kant, at the prime of his life and mental prowess, would have demanded nothing less -- but possibly much more.

Wishing one and all a good 2012.

Below is another draft fragment of an unfinished project from last year which is posted here as it may stimulate ideas for others.

“…everything is rich – in other words, everything that is commensurate with the universe. I insist on the fact that, to freedom of mind, the search for a solution is an exuberance, a superfluity; this gives it an incomparable force. To solve political problems becomes difficult for those who allow anxiety alone to pose them. It is necessary for anxiety to pose them. But their solution demands at a certain point the removal of this anxiety.”  -- The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille

There is something wrong with the world. We have apparently reached a point of great technological advancement where we can harness nuclear energy, and use it and all other scientific breakthroughs to innovate various ways to kill life through conflict and daily living; we can travel the air and outer space; we can land on the moon and send probes out into deep space; we can communicate with one another instantly and conduct economic transactions just as fast. We call ourselves modern and claim to be advanced.

   Yet:

• we rely almost entirely on fossil fuels that are limited and pollute the environment
• we cannot eradicate terminal and serious illnesses
• there is world wide poverty and hunger
• we cannot obviate the impact of natural disasters
• we believe what we see on TV and the mainstream media
• we allow ‘experts’, institutions and those in authority to sway our emotions and common sense easily
• we believe with certainty that science is truth and vice versa
• we buy into the claim that money is what life is about (for without it life is apparently impossible in the modern, sophisticated world guided by smart people)
• we admire celebrities and want to be like them (sic)
• we believe in a binary type of logic of either true or false and a restrictive idea of analysis which means you must agree to a form of linear thinking or you are plain unrealistic
• we somehow believe that there are higher truths, emotions and explanations beyond what we tend to believe but somehow prefer to be guided often by materialism
• we can see through the shenanigans of hoodwinkers if we just stay alert and watch our backs but continue in a thinking mode of global and societal indoctrination that continues to allows us to be bamboozled anyway
• we think big banks, big corporations and big government and ideology is somehow a good thing
• we think that living in fear and anxiety is normal (this last one is instrumental in resulting in most of what is listed above)
• we think those who do not live in fear and anxiety are abnormal, and we say things are the way they are and nothing can be done about them

   And the list does go on.

   But everything is energy. Science seems to think that too. Spirituality has been blasting that about for eons. We believe in the exuberance and irrepressible energy of the universe and can see its effects everywhere, but for some reason think that we have to live in limitation. Abundance is the natural state of affairs of everything, but we are stuck in a mindset of lack and grappling for resources.

   The universe is teeming with life. Just look at the earth (and all those microbes from outer space etc). You can have a plot of land untended for awhile and it sprouts weeds. You have some crack in the cement of buildings and you will have some life form crawling out of it. A thimbleful of soil has parallel cosmoses and worlds circulating in it.

   If harnessed properly, you can tap into magnetic energy for vehicle levitation and movement. You can tap into hydro, solar and wind energy. You can place turbines in the sea to use tidal energy. There is incredible energy all around us without which we wouldn’t be able to exist not to mention have a stable environment to sit and read a book without things flying all over or crumbling into dust every few minutes. Something is going on here bigger than we can imagine, but we take for granted and then accept limited ideas and theories in science and economics and views of media pundits as the limiting factors of ‘reality’.

   We confuse what is complicated with what is complex. We think complicated means Truth. But we find it difficult to accept that Truth can be simple yet complex. Complication is what leads to trouble. However, complexity cannot be avoided though actual realities can be quite simple.

Getting down to it

Most of what is here is based on the ideas from the two remarkable volumes by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (D&G) called Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus: collectively given the subtitle Capitalism and Schizophrenia (quotations are from the University of Minnesota Press translated editions).

   A good way to give an idea of what is in store with D&G is to look at Foucault’s memorable preface to Anti-Oedipus. The man rightly points out that “Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics…How does one keep from being fascist…How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behaviour?...one might say Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life.”

   In fact, D&G have provided a moral work, and are trying, without much success, to veer it away from the spiritual to the humanist dimension as well.

   Foucault adds (bold and italics mine):

 This art of living counter to forms of fascism, whether already present or impending,carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

• Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.
•  Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.
•  Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.
• Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality…that possess revolutionary force.
• Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.
• Do not demand of politics that it restore the ‘rights’ of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to ‘de-individualize’ by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.
• Do not become enamored of power.   

…The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives.

Uncomplicating the Complex   

Everything is energy. It is remarkable that we believe in most things scientific but fail to grasp that everything, the seen and unseen, the material that we take for real is nothing but energy. We are energy. Our thoughts, words and actions are energy. Emotions are nothing but energy: it can be defined as e-motion or energy-in-motion. Everything we do is energy. The universe and the world operates through the transference, transmission and use of energy.

   What this means is that every aspect of our daily life, real or imagined, spiritual or secular, pleasant or otherwise is just energy. The life force running through all of us is, just that, force=energy. Our society, government and economy are manifestations of energy. The way we work and live is about the circulation of energy. Rather than incorrectly looking at ourselves and our world and way of life as something static, we must see it as flux, energy in action.

   What prevents us from seeing this clearly is the inability to control emotions and the blockage provided by the ego. So rather than see ourselves in the third dimensional linear form of people who grow from children to adults and then die, we have to see ourselves as beings of energy forever in flux, driven by wants and needs. In this sense, it would be suitable to describe life forms or life as we know it (or ourselves) as desiring machines: as D&G would express it.

   The ego is the filter that processes and also blocks the energy momentum. It can do so through misunderstanding itself, the energy flows and the way energy is transferred. Part of our misconstruction of the world as energy is due to the theories and indoctrination of the self that we have undergone. We believe that there is a fixed ego or ‘I’, that it is of primary importance above all else, that it is shaped by its environment, that it is a living entity and can be harmed, and that it is linked to mythical concepts like the Oedipal complex (and many others).

   We have come to see ourselves stuck and driven merely by libidinal drives that must mean a restricted number of things, but all of which seem to lead to energy formations beyond ego. There is no doubt that mishandled human or libidinal energy leads to grief, but does it also lead to good? Must every aspect of the libidinal drive be trapped in negativity, guilt and as some would like to call it, ‘sin’?

   D&G are ambiguous about a lot of things, as it is their manner of expression and also because in some way they imitate Nietzsche’s way of doing philosophy which can seem potentially inconsistent, contradictory and often deliberately set at an offensive angle to the way society is at any given time. This leads to difficulty at times in trying to make out what exactly is meant but as all three would point out, trying to specify meaning is part of the problem we and our world have gotten into.

   D&G would say: ‘Why do we always have to insist that everything must actually mean something which then begs the issue as to what interpretation itself means and which form of interpretation should seek precedence over another (why on earth should there be precedence on interpretation anyway?).’ This would imply some form of hierarchical control being put in place to make people think and accept things one way rather than look and, more importantly, live life in as humanly a manner as possible – these are the incipient fascisms we must veer away from which we have failed to do time after time.

   The triangular and pyramidal patriarchal structure of interpretation of the world as represented by the Oedipal complex, among many others, pushes us to an unnecessarily and silly restrictive way of living. It is more a convenient mode of trying to limit entropy (which humans think they can do being primarily ego driven that is the basis for all control mania), and it is perpetuated by society and its elements of control (basically society as we know it abetted diligently by the mass media).

   Being driven to get what we want and need relentlessly is what makes us desiring machines. This is not to preclude any free will but that we are part of the flow of desire which we have invested in and used to shape a libidinal world, society and economy. But the fact that we get mired in fascist tendencies, incessant work, economic exploitation and political manipulation is not merely because it is imposed on us, but that we actually desire what comes to us.

   This is important: we may be desiring machines but we are not automatons devoid of choice. We do ask for what usually comes our way; we get what we rightly deserve. This again does not mean that there are no other desiring forces at work making things difficult for us, but that we often combine our libidinal energy with those forces and so create the world we are trapped/live in.   

   The term libidinal economy (LE) is used in such a variety of ways that is not easy to determine what it means at any one time. But it could be used to refer to an organic desire that is underwritten by our drives, wants, needs and attachments that can be seen as a system applied to various aspects of our life such as the economy or society; and in this sense it is a desiring machine.

   A desiring machine (DM) as used by D&G is an abstract machine and is imprecise in usage. One suspects that precision is not always what the two aim at for it may imply binding yourself down to something that must be defended at all costs through the ages: the kind of ideologies and strictures that the two are fighting against.

   So a DM would refer to a person (as an inchoate form, rather than ‘individual’) or object or system that is an agglomeration of desires/wants/needs or place holder for libidinal drives. It gives some form to that which is an energy flux. When we individualize this flux we call it ‘I’, ‘he’ or ‘she’ thereby investing it with an ego and the separateness that this entails. This is the start of wanting to assert control over things and being made into a unit that is subject to control.

Moving beyond Ego

When we take the energy of desiring machines into form of a human being we coalesce the basis of the human personality, or body without organs (BwO). Upon this form of human energy we have the transcription of codes of other energy forms that shape and influence us. This social energy field of ourselves is the socius. The latter has encodings from other energy flows and influences which are described as deterritorialized codings which are now encoded on the socius that in turn impinge upon us as BwOs.

   We are thus driven by wants and needs that develop and shape us into different forms or fields of energy depending on how various codes are activated. The societal energy codings and social transcriptions that are activated in us are like genetic codes and make us what we are as people and a society. Take a look at how D&G discuss things and try to unravel its essence (p33, Anti-Oedipus):

Capitalism does not confront the situation from the outside, since it experiences it as the very fabric of its existence, as both its primary determinant and its fundamental raw material, its form and its function, and deliberately perpetuates it, in all its violence, with all the powers at its command. Its sovereign production and repression can be achieved in no other way. Capitalism is in fact born of the encounter of two sorts of flows: the decoded flows of production in the form of money-capital, and the decoded flows of labour in the form of the ‘free worker’. Hence, unlike previous social machines, the capitalist machine is incapable of providing a code that will apply to the whole of the social field. By substituting money for the very notion of a code, it has created an axiomatic of abstract quantities that keeps moving further and further in the direction of the deterritorialization of the socius. Capitalism tends toward a threshold of decoding that will destroy the socius in order to make it a body without organs and unleash the flows of desire on this body as a deterritorialized field. Is it correct to say that in this sense schizophrenia is the product of the capitalist machine, as manic-depression and paranoia are the product of the despotic machine, and hysteria the product of the territorial machine?

   There is a lot going on here. For starters, codings which release a certain energy push people in a certain direction. For instance, a society that activates its circuitry via money-capital is one that has its ethos shaped by money creation, its perceived value and its exchange function. That entire society and most of its people will think and live according to the dictates and issues surrounding the use of money. Everything will be shaped by it.

   Similarly, the idea of the ‘worker as a free agent’ or the basic component of labour will be seen as a decoded flow on society (or a code that has been activated) and will shape lives according to that pattern. These are essentially individual thought and societal thought patterns that make a society what it is. So a society will be living along the lines of a work cycle and schedule around which daily existence operates and is influenced deeply by. 

   So according to D&G this is how capitalism plays itself out within this context. Capitalism in itself has no codings but is a synthesis in a way of both the money-capital and labour/‘free worker’ codings which it in turn unleashes on the socius the money-capital energy with a vengeance as the idea of labour is intrinsically tied to that of money-capital (production). This process of unleashing the money code further leads to a decoding/deterritorial activity that denudes the socius into the basic form of the human energy template or BwO (body without organs). The socius that is acting as the BwO is not the actual BwO and the person gets confusing signals that the worn out/denuded or deterritorialized socius is who they are in essence.

   In this sense, capitalism produces a form of schizophrenia. The person is split between realizing themselves as capitalist being and social form and as a human energy or essence. This tension and strain between an authentic self (BwO) and what is projected and falsified as ourselves (our capitalist/money circuited social beings) is in a way the source of so much of our mental, emotional and spiritual anxiety and imbalance that also manifests itself as physical ailments and all that is unhealthy in our lives and our world.

   What does this mean in concrete terms? Take an ordinary guy, Joe, who is middle class and takes on a part-time job as well to help make ends meet. His wife also works part-time when she can managing their two kids at the same time. His whole life and how he relates to his family and work is relegated to operating within the capitalist codes prefigured by money circuitry.

   So other than romance, his motivations to marry (or not) and have a family would include:

a.       cost of marriage and having a family

b.      cost of owning a home and paying off mortgage

c.       basic cost of having child/children (food and clothing)

d.      medical for kids when required

e.       schooling costs for kids

f.       entertainment costs for family

g.      in-laws and extended family related costs

h.      income taxes and hidden taxes that weaken income earned (e.g. inflation)

i.        cost of hi-tech gizmos which kids yearn for these days/miscellaneous stuff    

This money circuitry determines how people relate to each other, as it is also factored in some cases for pre-nuptials and divorces and all the costs those entail. The social cycle of a human being is hardly that of a ‘free agent’ but a labour unit conditioned from birth to death by money circuitry. When you die there are still taxes and other costs that may have to be settled. You are not a free person as such, but a type of ‘flexed out digit’ within the money circuit.

   This in turn inscribes on the socius or social form of Joe his ‘reality’ as he lives it. This so completely overwhelms him and his life that he comes to believe that all there is to himself and his world is the socius or his socially money circuited form. When his entire work life, daily grind decisions and tattered conscience becomes the substitute for his human energy essence, he lives his life as if his socius is his BwO.

   It is the tension between his human essence as BwO and his socius that produces so much of the suffering and dysfunctional nature of his life. The capitalist circuitry creates his schizophrenia in this sense. He has to choose between buying a toy his child really wants, and his budget; a school his child should go to and his budget; the medical attention his family needs and his budget; an outing with his friends and his budget. Every thing the normal person does is influenced largely by his budgetary constraints.

   This in turn impinges on the essence of who he truly is which tends to resonate with spiritual aspects of himself. Here D&G are schizoid themselves for they reach for a solution beyond three dimensions yet are quick to keep them within materialist limitations: they want to have their cake, eat it and insist that they did not try to eat it.

There has been much said about spirituality and nature. But today, it gets harder to see this clearly because with the conflicting voices coming from the rush to see capitalism through its death throes, a great deal in compassion is missing in the sound and fury of it all. In such times many turn to religion and spirituality but do not always get what they need from there either.

For instance, take Buddhism. In many ways, as it is taught today and as it is followed in many monasteries: there is a focus on meditational techniques, the doctrinal understanding of the teachings and the moral principles espoused in them. This is necessary.

But what is seen little of in many places of institutional religion and spirituality around the world are teaching emphases and being living examples, by those who proclaim them, of compassion and unconditional love; and while we’re at it, gratitude as well.

Which comes back to what did the Buddha do first thing upon attaining Enlightenment? We are told that the Master stood in front of the pipal tree under which he attained Realization, and gazed at it for seven days and seven nights without moving as an act of gratitude.

True, he had developed supernormal powers by then, but there were many things he could have done like, well, look for food or something (which is what most of us would think of doing). But he just stood there radiating love, compassion and gratitude.

This is the cornerstone of Buddhism: that with Enlightenment, or on the path to it, compassion and gratitude are defining characteristics. Especially since one has seen through the illusion of ego, you realize that you owe more to what is around than what everyone else is supposed to owe you -- this is still a novel thought for many.   

But, why a tree? Because it is a living thing. Because it was the shelter. Because it is harmless and provides a service to all life around, including for humans who know how to synergize with rather than desecrate it. Because, and this may be contrary to the view of orthodox Buddhism: it is a gift from God (yes, the Creator, the Universal, All That There Is, etc).

Again this may be shocking to some, but the Buddha never denied the existence of God nor the existence of a soul: what he did say is that it's of little use to pontificate about such matters when you should focus on actions leading to your salvation.

The Buddhist idea of anatta is a complex one. It is actually non-ego but tends to be interpreted as non-Self or no-soul. It was a revolutionary concept in the context of the time as it meant that the person you think you are is an illusion, in that the desires and projections that come from the ego generated by the senses are the cause of dissatisfaction in life. It certainly predates anything that psychoanalysis and our so-called ‘scientific’ pathological studies may provide today.

One of the reasons for veering away from traditional philosophical questions on the origin of the universe and God in Buddhism was because India at the time was full of all kinds of spiritual teachers and quacks and metaphysical speculation was the in-thing.

Yet it can also be pointed out that much of what the Buddha says was already put forward in Hindu teachings but without the former's minimal leaning on metaphysics. For all the great Teachers of the world have had the same message, it just has been adulterated through the ego and religious texts have been expurgated by those who use them, and via the institutions built on them, to instill fear and control over others.

The focus in Buddhism is on practising the teachings and less on philosophical debate. But like today, while we talk a lot about doing good, we don’t always follow it with action. Despite its talk of renunciation of many things, Buddhism is about action. You walk the talk.

Sometimes you stand in your truth by acquiring stillness and radiating gratitude to a tree. If we can’t even show gratitude to the natural world around us, can we genuinely show gratitude to people and loved ones? Or are our relations tainted by conditions: we state loudly ‘through sickness and in health’ (but mean through a ‘healthy’ bank balance too, better if it is a fat one).

Some of us know what fair weather friends are like. They are there when the going is good, there are even more of them (some of whom you never knew were your friends) when the going gets better. 

As good old Dr Samuel Johnson says: “Adversity is the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then.”

How true.

However, through thick and thin, earth abides. It is always there for us. The trees and plants and the natural world are always there. And we are always there to tear them down to build fancy condominiums as investment strategies and to find ways of making a buck from life. We have been led to believe and even adamantly proclaim ourselves, that what good is the world and life around us if we can’t make money from it?

Just look at the world around us to see the happy effect of this kind of indoctrination and ideology.

When the Buddha was abandoned by those who knew him as in the spiritual seekers who were his band of brothers, he had only himself and the tree. In coming to his full Awakening and realizing the Unconditioned termed Nirvana, he sets an example for the ages through demonstrating Unconditional love and gratitude to a tree.

After this act of gratitude, the first group of people the Buddha searches out to impart his teaching of love and freedom from birth and death is the band of seekers who left him. Why does the Buddha seek them out?

Because there is no discrimination against those who may have left him and if you have compassion and gratitude to all, then you have that to each person without conditions. He is also grateful for the experiences of adversity. This is something people don’t get as we tend to look at many difficulties as terrible suffering and want to run away from them only to end up sometimes in even worse conditions.

The point is not to be a sado-masochist but see in the difficulties, the challenges and lessons for growth (not the GDP, $$$ kind) as human beings evolving back to Godhead. That without the adversity and ‘abandonment’ it would be difficult to see who you truly are. As you have identified your ego self by those around you without sometimes the slightest discernment. We can be quite self conscious of what others think of us. You see yourself as represented through the eyes of others full of their own ego.

But on your own with the right spiritual balance, you can discover the Oneness of all life. You can tap into the eternal light of All That Is and there is only light and energy, as even our lame and ego driven scientific theories claim. And energy can be transformed.

If energy is devoid of fear, harm and greed, it can transform you and the world. The lesson from the natural world can also come in the form of how uncomplaining a tree, plant or animal is when left on its own within its habitat. The tree does not complain whatever the weather is, it does not react violently when it is cut down or stripped of its branches, it does not show anger when careless people carve their names on it, nor does it discriminate as to who can take the fruit from its boughs.

This is reflected in Buddhism in which we are told to let go of many things; let go of ego, fear, greed, anger, hatred, unbridled desires, intoxication and anything that is of harm to you or life. By doing so you allow yourself to be filled with love, compassion, peace and happiness – abundance enters your life, and there is indeed a lot to be grateful for.

As you can find in Matthew these words of wisdom (6:25-34):

    ²⁵"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

²⁶"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

³¹"So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

The words speak for themselves.

Read them carefully over a period of time. Think over them. Read them again, and yet again, and then once more.

Observe and see if there is not, over time, truth in them. If you do what you’re supposed to do caring for the world and people and life around you, you will be taken care of. The world and everything in it will turn out well. This can be practiced in daily life within the family, workplace, and society.

Difficult, sure, who on earth said it was always a walk across a field.

The earth is a demanding school for learning through adversity. Through the greatest challenges come the greatest learning and advancement and peace. And the greatest rewards. There will always be enough, you need to know how to draw from it, and that requires a paradigm shift; but all these shifts are spiritual in nature.

If you ground your energies in gratitude to the world and the miracle of life around you there will be in time a joy, peace and freedom that comes from it that cannot be measured in any form. In that moment of being here now, where you are, and not wanting to be anywhere else you see the grace of the divine flowing through you, and slowly but surely you understand why you are here and that everything will be well. When you learn such lessons, don’t be surprised to see a shooting star one night that tells you’ve been given a star for a lesson recently learnt.

But usually, the immediate response from a world of incessant handphone buzzing, stock markets, advertising and media mania, and inveterate i-padding is -- why can’t the results happen now, since you tried to be ‘good’ for one day. But the lesson is only learnt and bears fruit through patience, which the Buddha rightly proclaims is the highest austerity.

The ego wants everything now, but God tells you, all in good time. We still haven’t got it yet, but we are not in control of the universe. However, on this planet given for our learning, the results of our choices from free will are coming back to show us where we stray. If that is still unapparent, then witness the turmoil of the weather and the world. This is a time of cleansing.

Through making the right choices and doing the right thing, a balance will be regained, but until then you can prepare for much upheaval globally in every sense of the word and in each aspect of your life.

Our conscious thoughts are creating our reality. The more we live and believe in lack and the need to beggar someone else to get ‘ahead’ or sustain ourselves, the more difficult things will be till we learn from them.

There is the famous question that also underlies quantum physics as once raised by Berkeley on the impact of consciousness on what happens in the world that comes in the form: does a tree actually fall in the woods unless you are there to listen or perceive that it is so.

You may ask so what does such thinking have to do with the very real problems of the unrest in Egypt and what may take place elsewhere?

Well, sometimes the sound of one hand clapping comes from extreme satori. It is the sound and knowledge you get that the tree really is falling when it comes crashing down on your head.

There is a lesson in that somewhere.