Without the construction of social roles or elaborate games with multiple people, certain avenues of existence would not be available. This positive freedom has never been lost to those who believe in authority and its ability to deliver a sort of existence which is impossible without the expertise or existence of itself.
Social roles also confine people to certain behaviors and limits against people’s interest. This negative quality of authority has never been lost to those who immediately shirk away from people telling other people what to do.
All around us we are surrounded by construction work, forms and systems made by others, made by nature itself. You can’t ski down a Alp (unsure if it is still a word when singular) without the Alp (see previous parenthetical notation) being created by nature, being territorialized by humanity. Thus, the Alp (…) is subject to social order, to natural order, and utilizing it for any purpose related to a phenomenological human experience such as skiing requires engagement in social roles surrounding skiing.
I can look up via image search, “Zebra skiing,” and immediately get a zebra skiing. Have we forgotten our ancestors’ laws of blood magic* so much that we forget that for magic, or technology so advanced that we could not replicate it on our own, or without all of humanity at our disposal, that there would be a price to pay? *(not sure if actually a thing or from a tv show). For convenience, we pay the social price. We are inscribed into the social order. But through the social order, we gain the world of modern phenomena.
It is clear that social roles emerge from our own use of its powers. When we use something which is beyond primitive, chances are it has already exacted a price from us. We know no app is free, why have we not learned that no technology is exempt from taking something from us as well?
Our social roles and our day-to-day conveniences are constantly taking from us a toll, we constantly pay in ways we don’t understand for the things which are given to us. Thus, to deny the social while eating from the tree of modernity is not a matter of being unethical, it is simply impossible. Dialectical magic is at work.
Thus, to notice the social and to submit ourselves to a sort of validity of the social while either challenging it or obeying the forces, moving with the forces of the social is the start of being able to see the validity of this dialectical karma already at work in the world.
We want to ski, we have to buy the ticket to take the ride. We want to paint, we have to obtain paint, either from someone for free or we buy it, or maybe even you make it. But then, you also gain the materials from someone else as well. To deny that you are an Actually Existing Social animal inscribed into the outside is an exercise in blindness.
This image comes up when I search for, “anarchist zebra.” A magick dialectical price will be paid for this too undoubtedly.
Antithetically to the social, is personal psychology. The well-being of the self at the cost of any social project, any social agency, any dream dreamt up by our spiritual forefathers, can be put radically into question by the notion that we don’t like it!
Freedom of speech. I don’t like it! Nature preserves. I don’t like it! Family. I don’t like it! You can think of some more examples, I guarantee I can say “I don’t like it!” after it. I don’t actually mind freedom of speech, nature preserves, or family, but these are linguistic concepts that exact a toll from you. Why worship any of them at your own expense?
What do these social roles have to do with my own well-being. Which reminds me, as Zizek famously says, to paraphrase: happiness, I don’t like it! Category of slaves! All categories can enslave however. We will pay a dialectical magick toll to all of the categories which we involve ourselves with.
Why be against the denial of social order if it can enslave us? Simply, because we can not help but to be deeply steeped in the stuff already. You can be against your own skin, but it won’t do you any good, it surrounds you, controls your temperature, will punish you if you don’t take care of it.
Doesn’t a zebra look kind of like a horse? You can’t ride it however. It is a wild animal, it will fuck you up. Don’t sit on a zebra.
Doesn’t existing kind of look like being an individual who is free to choose what they are going to do in the next moment, free of consequence, and away from social forces? It’s not. You can pretend it’s not, but that just means you won’t even be able to choose what you are buying with your soul, your soul will be on autopay. If you recognize the social roles you are in and their power you will recognize the karmic echos which will break back into you as what they are more easily. You will be able to choose positive freedoms for what they are, even if you can’t always choose their consequences.
Karmic Chaos is law, but as Keynes says about short-term economic policy, “in the long run, we are all dead.” Similarly, in the long-run, we don’t know the consequences of our next step, but we can at least pay some respect to the process of stepping so we don’t try to ride a zebra, that is to say, don’t delude ourselves about the world that we inhabit.
Recognize the significance and power of social roles without simply rejecting their reality, and be empathetic enough to care about yours and others’ personal well-being, and this world might just not fuck you up more than it already has to.
Consider yourself warned of the reality of ignoring the karmic chaos of the logical world, respect may protect you, but nothing will let you escape.