Importance of Duty

[Masha]

For most people alive today, playing the game is a losing bet. When you go join the regular working paradigms, the mechanized world, and subscribe to the ideological symbol system, you more often than not are kept and then left an empty shell; left with only a superficial sense of self, where only the most immediate rays of social discourse remain conscious. I've worked in places like retail and the food industry only briefly when I was growing up, and it was soul-draining, goal-crushing, mind-numbing work.

Have you been to a mall lately? They're terrible. You couldn't tell the zombies from the really-living beings half the time. And of course there's surveillance EVERYWHERE. The whole world is turned to a prison. The enlightenment ideals of rationality, man as fundamentally free, and that his actions are predicated on the notion of fear of a violent death are reaching their natural conclusions. Nothing has gone wrong.

As an individual, if you have no sense of duty -- a sense of beholden-ness to solidarity with your fellow man -- will you choose to flee into the woods? Maybe start a donation based yoga studio, give a few massages on the weekend, shop at Whole Foods, and read books by Indian gurus on how to achieve enlightenment?

It doesn't seem all that bad. It'd be a very therapeutic trip. However, one thing that stops me from "going off into the woods" in one way or another is what I can only call a sense of duty; the knowledge that I could do actually socially meaningful labor. Also, the desire to work, and to work for my family -- who is everyone, to varying degrees of valuation.

From this, I try to address the root problems of society head on; to uproot them, both inside and outside me.

I don’t worry so much about small, local-level issues, as I see those as symptoms. Instead, I try to take the whole world as my canvas.

You may have limited colors and limited awareness and limited time and limited limiteds up the wazzoo... but it's either that, or go into therapy-mode. It's either therapy or art; either you try and heal from it, or you wage battle to change it.

Those are the only two meaningful individual directions in our present predicament. Duty is to realize this. It's to realize who you really are: a societal being, first and foremost.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Duty is important, but it should not form the basis of any ethical or political approach. Duty to what, or duty to whom? How does one deal with competing duties? All of these require a balance of our other virtues.

It is an important way to gain a sense of meaning outside of ourselves, however we must have a compelling reason to be dutiful to a particular group or individual in the first place for that duty to mean anything.

[oneday]

I've hit bottom, going into the woods will no longer work. It's not about duty, I have no other choice. The only question is what to do.

[Masha]

I've hit bottom, going into the woods will no longer work. It's not about duty, I have no other choice. The only question is what to do.

If by going into the woods you mean escaping society, then yes. It's everywhere now, and being some sort of Śramaṇa or mendicant is unfashionable anyway. But I was using it in a looser sense here -- more like one who's decided to be a tasteful hedonist. Like people who go and live in communes. Basically, Luddites.

But yeah, there's no choice between participating or not participating anymore. It's more a matter of how much you participate and in what ways.

[Masha]

Duty is important, but it should not form the basis of any ethical or political approach. Duty to what, or duty to whom? How does one deal with competing duties? All of these require a balance of our other virtues.

It is an important way to gain a sense of meaning outside of ourselves, however we must have a compelling reason to be dutiful to a particular group or individual in the first place for that duty to mean anything.

Hmm, do you think one can feel a sense of duty for mankind, or is that a bastardization of the term? I kind of sidestepped that issue in my first post by suggesting that one can, but following it up by saying that it is to varying degrees of valuation. I'd prefer a more narrow conception of it though. You think it is something that, when it comes to politics or ethics, needs to be more or less ignored (or just not play an important role?) when it comes to decision making or taking action?

I'm curious what your attitude on seppuku is then.

[Masha]

[Rafiq]

The problem is not a matter of "I know very well this would be the ethical thing to do, but it is impractical". The point is - going to the woods, starting a yoga studio, is not only 'impractical', it is unethical if it is done so as to erase ones sense of guilt. The impulse to have a duty - to be guilty of shirking upon it - is not the problem, but how one articulates what one can and should do about things.

The way in which we oppose the world today... That which we seek the abolition of the existing order of things... Is not from the angle of someone making a pretension to looking from the 'outside' in. It is that we are a part of this order, and only by merit of controversies and struggles which manifest themselves at the level of this social order will we be able to overthrow it. A retreat into the woods, in other words, is not only pointless, it is a reactionary act. One does not leave society by running into the woods. One contains the universality of society and all the contradictions that constitute it, as underlying their very reasoning and justification for running into the woods. In other words, it is the society in which you live that is a precondition to a pretension to being able to run away from it.

We do not oppose society from outside of society, but on the contrary, as beings within it. It is not a matter of choosing to be a part of society or not. It is a matter of being conscious of how you are a part of it. The way in which we oppose capitalism presupposes various achievements of the capitalist totality (compared to previous ones), the achievements of liberalism, that is.

You are correct. The first task, the first step in duty is not to jump straight away, waving red flags and calling it a day. The first step, the hardest step, is to think. To think deeply to the point where nothing about your individuality is sacred - everything is open for criticism, the ways in which ruling ideology relates to your individuality, must be ruthlessly criticized. A difficult process. It takes a kind of stubbornness to carry through with it. But what one gains at the end is a kind of freedom that which they can and will never shirk back from. The task, therefore, for the individual, is to keep pushing through, with all ones doubts and feelings of faithlessness, to push through in understanding our tradition and our cause, to never take a single step back.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Hmm, do you think one can feel a sense of duty for mankind, or is that a bastardization of the term? I kind of sidestepped that issue in my first post by suggesting that one can, but following it up by saying that it is to varying degrees of valuation. I'd prefer a more narrow conception of it though. You think it is something that, when it comes to politics or ethics, needs to be more or less ignored (or just not play an important role?) when it comes to decision making or taking action?

I'm curious what your attitude on seppuku is then.

I don't think duty must be ignored, in fact it may well be essential to certain kinds of ethical or political behavior. However, duty should not in and of itself be the *basis* for an ethical or political action. A Klansman has a sense of duty to his race - his sense of duty is wholly reactionary however. A striker's sense of duty to their comrades is not reactionary and is in fact essential to the success of a valuable action. The thing is, duty itself is not the basis for the system (this is why it is important to be aware and critical of nationalist demands to "do our duty" and serve the interests of "the nation").

As for Seppuku, it depends on who is doing it and why :P

[The Intransigent Faction]

Yeah, I found this expressed a lot of what I've been feeling lately.
As others have said, though, we must be careful about any abstract sense of duty. I was just reading Pannekoek yesterday, and to paraphrase him, if workers are taught socialism simply as a duty to a party, or a union, and leaders hijack it, the workers will simply "change colour" along with the organization. Duty must be recognized insofar as that recognition is supported by critical, socialist understanding. Duty is neither to abstract principles, nor to an organization, but between workers themselves fighting for socialism (in a confrontational sense, but mostly in the sense of struggling to build the economic organs that will form the new system).