It
seems that all intellectual freedom must begin with consciousness, more
specifically, the comprehension of automated forms. Humans assume the
value of the forms they practice (almost none of them are conscious of
value outside the emphasis of the cultural forms they practice). For a
thinker this amounts to incompetence. A thinker should be concerned with
more than cultural replication, he should be concerned with the
objectivity of value. This simply means content that has something to
offer the concrete movement of life or that contextualizes and
revolutionizes the activity of life (the expansion or contextual
clarification of consciousness, of concepts, is also a form of the
concrete).
Objections that tend to
criticize form, as opposed to content, are unconscious of their critical
form. Simplified, this often comes out to mean: "you are not observing
or conforming to our rituals." The charge is often an unconscious
complaint to a lack of conformity. The hardest thing to obtain is
freedom of form; the emphasis of history stands against it, but an
intelligent being cannot simply replicate tradition because it's
socially familiar, he or she must apply intelligence to discern whether
or not tradition is itself intelligent! Often, by thinking, the Thinker
finds a better way. What matters then, is not the tradition of form, but
the quality of content contained within it. Just because something
displeases our aesthetic taste doesn't mean it lacks value in content. A
good Thinker is concerned, above all else, with the quality of
thought's content.
Because we have
observed so many varied forms, because we have been mastered by many
cultural forms, we demand conformity to the forms by which we have been
mastered; we demand conformity to the forms that society celebrates. I
contend that this way of thinking is (a flaw) lacking in critical
consciousness, what's not a flaw, is thinking of the quality of content
as opposed to its form.
It's a strange and
useless objection to complain that something is "lacking in value"
because it lacks a replication of form. In truth this is merely proof
that the critic is not actually thinking about the content that's before
him, he's merely noting the fact that it's unfamiliar to him -- this is
not enough to refute it, and those who dismiss content on the basis of
form, have already proven themselves deficient in thought. (It is perhaps
the shallowest form of criticism that rejects content on the basis of
its unfamiliarity to one's given culture). This kind of thinking is not
thought, it's the opposite of thought.
Let
the truth be known: no human is obligated to replicate the intellectual
styles of their culture. A thinking mind will strive to apply
intelligence to form and this will usually mean departing from familiar
cultural forms; it will mean the articulation of value in the most
practical and concise way that it can be achieved; concise, because life
is limited, it doesn't have eternity to orient itself to existence. Of course, there is also the question of power in form, and
this question matters to the implementation of value in culture. What
good is quality content if it can only be assimilated by a minority,
that in the long run, guarantees its extinction? The greatest clarity
ever achieved by man is useless if it simply falls by the wayside
without integration into culture. The question of power in form is much
more complicated than the question of quality in content. In a good
thinker the questions of power and quality are dialectically bound
together.
What is it that gives a form
its authority? Is the answer merely, "its content?" Is the thinker "out
of line" in demanding that his audience discern the value in his
content, and therefore, look past his form?
We
know this: life is exceedingly short and the actions we perform in it
are very unlikely to have the value we attribute to them. We are, more
often than not, unconsciously deceived by the value-assumptions
contained in cultural forms. Is it possible to labour in and toward a
content and form that contains a value that goes beyond the fleeting
emphasis of culture? The answer is, "yes"! Because reality is not merely
a product of human thought, man finds himself in the midst of a
universe he did not create, a universe that contains objective
conditions to which he must conform/learn to work with (revolutionize!) in order to bring
about the betterment of his own existence.
The
most relevant question: what is this content that contains value beyond
the emphasis of culture? The answer is a Naturalistically-
Form is often
something imposed on us, it can come to operate like a kind of cultural
tyranny limiting the intelligence of creative-freedom to emancipate
itself from the mindlessness of tradition. We must search for the
courage to defy the stupidity of form in the name of intelligence; our
chief concern should be for the development of an advanced quality
-- content that has the capacity to emancipate the species from
unintelligent forms, to transcend material conditions that restrict our
ability to flourish in quality and expand our realization of freedom.
Nothing
is harder than mastering a freedom of form, not what culture demands
of us, but that which intelligently corresponds to our conditions in the
universe.
*Naturalistically-Contextualized-Thought: this refers to a consciousness that transcends culture and comprehends the species within the limited and fragile context of its material conditions. The universe is objectively indifferent to the existence of man, just like it has been indifferent toward the extinction of billions of species. Man must learn to cultivate and harness the power of the Social (to move by intelligence!) if he wishes to advance qualitatively into the future.
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