UP-WINGERS

by F. M. ESFANDIARY

  This is precisely the distinction between the new optimism and the optimism of the visionaries of the past. The optimism of a Goethe a Nietzsche or a Marx was necessarily a limited optimism based on historical progress. It was an optimism within a basically pessimistic human situation.

  But the optimism I have been advancing is not based simply on historical progress. It is primarily and ultimately predicated on our evolutionary breakthroughs.

  To miss this central point is to miss the whole meaning of Optimism.

  * * * *

  In our preoccupation with daily domestic problems we tend all too often to lose sight of these transcendent dimensions now opening up to us. It is therefore not surprising that we persist in our traditional posture of pessimism.

  But the philosophy of an age cannot and must not be derived from daily newspaper headlines. Headlines which invariably stress our daily problems.

  An age cannot be defined by the detail of everyday events. The broader currents are what finally mark an age.

  These broad and ever broadening currents mark ours as the First Age of Optimism.

  * * * *

  We must now make this philosophy of Optimism work for us. We need Optimism as infusion to accelerate our forward thrust—uplift our self-image.

  Until now we have been passive organisms manipulated by the arbitrary forces of evolution—tyrannized by the rapacities of nature—beaten down by authoritarian social systems (parents teachers employers priests leaders gods)—enfeebled by theologies and philosophies which have instilled in us the conviction that we are evil and worthless.

  These age-old pressures have left us limp.

  Not surprisingly therefore our gravest crisis now, as in the past, is the lack of self-esteem. We lack self-esteem as individuals and as a species.

  Today we are challenging our old passivity, emerging as creators of our own destiny. One of the greatest upheavals now unfolding is in our new activist role in evolution.

  But our new activism in the universe is not bolstering our self-image rapidly enough. We are still hobbled by our traditional self-image—viewing ourselves as puny and passive.

  We need a massive infusion of confidence—a cosmic consciousness-uplifting.

  Optimism as a philosophy strives to provide this bolstering. It seeks to update our self-image, rendering it compatible with our exploding role in the universe.

  One way to achieve consciousness-raising is to travel all over our planet—the earlier in life the better. To experience firsthand the peoples and the animals the ruins and the launching pads the mountains the oceans and the deserts—to become involved in our planet. Its past present and future. In this way develop the awareness that we are not simply members of some community religion or nation. Or simply a part of a specific place and a specific time. But that we are members of this entire human family—creatures of this entire planet—part of a dynamic continuity—an ongoing forward-thrusting evolution whose origins go back to the animals the forests the oceans but whose potentials are now suddenly infinite.

  A second step in this uplifting is to grow involved in the universe. We can do this effectively at night in the country when the universe is most visible.

  People who live in cities are too preoccupied with everyday problems, too blinded by city lights to look out at the universe and develop a cosmic awareness. Rural people living under the nightly roof of galaxies lack the scope to look beyond their sheds and villages.

  At night in the country we can experience the moon the planets the stars and the galaxies. At first the exposure may be disquieting. But gradually as we grow more and more involved the universe grows familiar and reassuring.

  It is then that we can slowly realize who we really are. Not simply members of a neighborhood or a nationality. But members of a remarkably intelligent species inhabiting a planet in this solar system this galaxy this universe. A part of a Space/Time dimension greater and more transcendent than anything on the streets.

  It may then occur to us that our brain—this human brain of ours poised there observing the galaxies—is one of the extraordinary phenomena in the universe.

  We can further cosmicalize our consciousness by involving ourselves in the monumental breakthroughs now burgeoning all around us. Breakthroughs in inter-people and inter-nation communications. Particularly upheavals in biology and Space which, as I will show in Part 3, are transforming our situation in the universe.

  All these and other attempts at consciousness-uplifting are intended to liberate us from our traditional self-image. Help us grow aware that we are part of something greater than our everyday existences. That from here on we can and we will achieve the most transcendent visions. That there is hope—a new hope in the world.

  * * * *

  This new Up spirit must now infuse all our movements. No movement can succeed if it does not believe in its success. No guidance is worth anything if it does not dare project hope.

  You cannot energize people by generating self-doubt—maybe we will succeed, maybe we won't. This is half-assed guidance.

  It takes guts to be optimistic.

  It also takes monumental energy because the majority of humankind traumatized by guilt—fear—self-doubt lives off the life force of the visionary-optimists.

  Anger over our lingering problems is fine. Anger can be a positive force. But pessimism defeatism—never.

  Pessimism is reactionary and leads to apathy. “What is the use,” the pessimist reasons, “human nature is hopelessly evil the world is rotten—why try? The hell with the world. I will think only of myself."

  It is no accident that those who complain the most about the world are the ones who do the least.

  If you are doing nothing for the world you have no moral right to complain. You have not even earned the right to be pessimistic.

  * * * *

  Don't listen to the pessimists and the cynics. They are losers.

  They don't even feel they deserve happiness.

  If we had listened to them we would still be in caves.

  Don't listen to those who say it can't be done. Remember the pessimists throughout the centuries who were absolutely sure that the world was about to end. Remember those who were absolutely sure that conquests and colonialism would never end. That we would never have a United Nations that Common Markets would never succeed that global communication would never happen ... That we would never have a six-day workweek that we would never have a five-day workweek never a four-day workweek ... That life expectancy could never go beyond forty never beyond fifty never beyond sixty never beyond seventy ... That we could never be like birds and fly that we could never reach the moon that we could never that we would never that we will never...

  I am fed up with these messengers of doom.

  Don't listen to those who say it can't be done. Listen to those who say it can be done.

  Listen to the optimists. Optimism appeals to the noblest emotions: idealism—trust—confidence. Pessimism appeals to the basest—guilt—shame—fear—self-doubt—self-hate.

  Optimism is visionary. Pessimism reactionary.

  Pessimism is Anti-Future.

  The whole history of humanity is irrefutable proof of the triumph of optimism over pessimism. The triumph of the doers over the withholders. The triumph of individuals with burning visions who through the ages have been prodding and pushing their fellow humans up and up from the abyss from one level of history to the next.

  Today we are preparing to take giant evolutionary leaps into fantastic beautiful worlds. There is no room for pessimism no room for the oldworld psychology of despair. We have come too far triumphed over too many impossible barriers disproven too many timid alarmists to allow ourselves now to remain bogged down in defeatism.

  For the very first time we have the ability and the resources to resolve all our age-old problems. More important we have the potential to up-wing to a higher evolution.

  What we need today is intelligent planning—commitme
nt—vision. With these we can now achieve anything.

  * * *

  PART 2

  * * *

  historical breakthroughs:

  beyond feudal/industrial

  Historical Breakthroughs beyond feudal/industrial are an extension of humanity's age-old struggle. They are a departure from previous revolutions because:

  1. They are global—issuing from large urban centers and spreading across the planet.

  2. Their aim is not simply to modernize the old social economic political institutions. But to do away with them altogether.

  What will take the place of procreation—family—marriage—school—art—work—money—agriculture—government—city—nation? In this section I will discuss these questions and project some new directions.

  * * *

  beyond family: universal life

  We are all under the impact of millennia of conditioning. We feel impelled to have a family. Impelled to have children. Impelled to have a home. Impelled to send children to school. Impelled ... impelled...

  We accept these traditions as incontrovertible. Consider them biological imperatives, seldom questioning them more deeply. Do you really need a family at all? Do you really need marriage? Do you need children? A home? A school?

  The craving for marriage—family—home is chiefly a craving for structure. This craving probably begins in the mother's womb—the first structure.

  (There is not much we can do now about this earliest structure. Within forty or fifty years we will probably do away with procreation altogether. We will perpetuate life in the living and this pathological craving for womb-structures may be slowly deprogrammed out of us. Still later, future-people may not crave any structures—not even planets.)

  If the womb is the first structure the second is the family. But in providing a kind of womb-like security the family in reality perpetuates in the individual lifelong vulnerability to insecurity. The structure-dependence which the infant had developed in the womb is reinforced by the family.

  We may not now be able to do anything about the womb but there is much we can do right away about the family.

  * * * *

  Today in urban centers around the planet age-old institutions of family—marriage—home are breaking down. In the cities, where trends often start, the direction is away from marriage and family. Urbanites now marry later than ever—enjoy more freedom within marriage—divorce with greater ease and frequency.

  Attempts are under way to modernize marriage: Trial-marriage—serial-marriage—group-marriage—open-marriage—celibate-marriage...

  These timid gropings do not go to the roots of our family problems.

  Those who advocate these alternatives are like the reformers within the church. Reforms are no longer enough. Marriage itself must go.

  Marriage in any form is an inherently primitive system. No variation will work. You cannot modernize such a system. It is like striving to modernize religion or the army.

  All family systems are monopolistic and exclusivist. This is true of the extended-family—the polygamous and polyandrous families—the nuclear family—the Kibbutz—the cooperative—the commune. The exclusivity varies in degrees.

  In recent decades the nuclear family (father mother children) has been supplanting the older family systems. Throughout much of the twentieth century the insistent thesis of Western social scientists has been this: If a child feels loved by its mother and father it will have a solid emotional foundation. It will grow up secure. A good relationship with the all-important mother and father is essential to the child's healthy development.

  This emphasis on positive parent-child relations pervades our consciousness our whole cultural matrix. Particularly in modern and Western societies.

  The fact is that the premise of this quasi-modern thesis is wrong. The very exclusivity of parent-child relationships is unsound. Even where the parent is loving the relationship is intrinsically unsound. The damage is built into the exclusivity of the relationship between parent and child.

  The infant is early conditioned to the realization that its survival depends on its relationship with the all-important mother. (Or specific mother substitutes.) It is at this earliest stage that the child is conditioned to predicate its survival on a one-to-one relationship. Without my mother I will die.

  My mother. This is the first act of possessiveness. It means survival to the infant. But long after its survival-linked value has been outgrown its imprint persists and is transferred to others.

  Without my mother I will die develops into: without my wife (or my husband or lover) I will die. (The husband or male lover is usually a mother symbol—mother the primary and ultimate figure.) Breakups between lovers are painful precisely because the relationship is often a symbolic replay of that very first mother-child relationship. Losing the husband wife or lover regenerates the infantile terror and trauma at suddenly losing the all-important mother.

  I haven't heard from him since his postcard ten days ago. I don't know what to do. I can't concentrate on anything. I can't sleep. I can't eat...

  She walked out of my life. I don't know what to do without her. Life isn't worth living anymore. I don't want to go anywhere see anyone...

  He doesn't want me anymore. He is in love with another woman. I've never been more miserable in my life. I have nightmares. I cry all the time. I wish I were dead...

  Loneliness—bitterness—depression—hysteria—trauma—beatings—killings—suicide. All because of love—fixated love. Fixated on that initial survival-linked love of the mother which leaves the individual forever vulnerable.

  All this suffering makes no sense. In a world full of people it makes no sense that we suffer loneliness—depression or panic over the disruption of one relationship.

  * * * *

  The exclusivity of the mother-child relationship automatically makes every mother possessive. Even the unpossessive mother is possessive.

  One of my students summed up the universal feelings of mothers and fathers. “I am not at all a possessive mother” she said. “I give my child a lot of freedom. But there is something beautiful about having my own child. Someone who belongs to me. Not until you have had your own child can you appreciate this."

  My own child. Someone who belongs to me. Your own child.

  This is the beginning of possessiveness. The parent owns its child. Society expects and accommodates this ownership.

  But in possessing a child you create in it the lifelong need to possess and the lifelong need to be possessed.

  To possess a child is to render it dependent on your continued possession. In other words, to make it possessive.

  Being possessed by the parent becomes equated with being loved (assured of survival). To maintain this love the child, and later the adult, will stop at nothing. It will compete—fight—grab—cheat. Or as I already noted it will withdraw into depression and trauma. As an adult he/she may even kill for this love.

  The individual who wants to possess and be possessed is never free, never at peace.

  Conflicts among people have not been spurred so much by hatred as by love—possessive love, exclusive love.

  Every day people kill for love. They kill or hurt their husbands—wives—lovers. They kill for the love of the motherland or fatherland. They kill for the love of their clan—religion—gods.

  More people have been killed for love than for any other cause.

  Patriotism—chauvinism—ethnocentrism—racism—these are all variations of possessive love. My country my people ... The initial conditioning to such political and nationalistic exclusivities starts in the exclusive family.

  The family based on the initial ownership (possession) of the child is a spawning ground for rivalry—jealousy—acquisitiveness—fanaticism—violence...

  The love we develop in our exclusive family systems is too desperate and fragile. It is a narrow, vulnerable love built on exclusivity not inclusivity.

  The family is a disruptive
destructive system.

  * * * *

  The exclusivity of parent-child relations is damaging in more obvious ways —

  The child suffers lifelong psychological damage if the mother or father on whom it depends for trust and security is unstable—possessive—repressive—rejecting...

  The child often suffers lifelong trauma (depression—apathy—loss of confidence ...) if the parent suddenly dies or departs.

  The child suffers if the parents split up.

  It suffers if it is not given freedom.

  It also suffers if it is given freedom because within its intrinsically unfree exclusive relationships with its parents freedom is often viewed as rejection.

  The child suffers from the inevitable rivalries with its exclusive brothers and sisters who are also involved in exclusive relationships with the all-important parents.

  Within family systems parents are too central and all-important to the development of the child, rendering the child highly vulnerable, its lifelong well-being on shaky pre-conditions. We have placed all our eggs in one basket.

  * * * *

  We must settle for nothing less than the total elimination of the family. The family in its many forms is primitive based on the ownership of individuals—starting with the ownership of children.

  We are striving to eliminate economic monopolism. We must also do away with psychological monopolism.

  If you are a parent you are a monopolizer of human life.

  You are a monopolist whether you are a gentle loving parent or a cruel one.

  You are a monopolist because you own your child.

  Ownership of children is more insidious than the monopoly of wealth and of power.

  To have a child of your own and clamor for socialism is inconsistent and self-defeating because you yourself are engaged in the most primitive form of capitalism—psychological monopolism.

  To be involved in Women's Liberation and still want a child of your own is inconsistent and self-defeating because you yourself are helping perpetuate the very conditions leading to patriarchy and matriarchy.