2002,+Heartfield,+The+Subjective+Factor,+DOSE,+Conclusion

Conclusion
=The Subjective Factor=

Like Mark Twain’s death, reports of the ‘Death of the Subject’ are exaggerated. They have to be. The fulcrum point on which society turns is the freely willing subject. For all of the attempts to imagine a world without subjects, but only processes and objective forces, no developed society is conceivable without rationally choosing individuals at its core. This indeed was the one rational insight of the ‘methodological individualists’, that the decision-making procedures of a complex society are inconceivable without at least as complex a network of decision-makers. Every day the totality of human interactions sufficient not just to recreate the conditions of mankind’s survival but also of its growth are achieved by no other force than us human beings. And yet the evidence, outlined in the foregoing, is that collectively society is recoiling from personal responsibility and choice. Subjectivity is held in low esteem.

The only way to undestand this mismatch is that the human subject persists, but in denial of its own subjectivity. Overwhelmed by the sense of powerlessness that grips each of us, we characterise our society in profoundly impersonal, even inhuman ways. Globalisation takes society out of our control. Biological metaphors for human behaviour assume ever-greater force, as anger, desire and jealousy are all traced – improbably – to genetic causes. Cultural explanations, too, predominate as human actions are endlessly reduced to the outcome of environmental influences. Psychology provides further reasons to distance oneself from one’s own choices, in the theory that family life determines behaviours. This is the condition that Jean-Paul Sartre characterises as ‘bad faith’, the recoil from freedom that provides more and more alibis to explain away the meaning of our actions.

The accumulated defeats of the past weigh down upon us, making ambitious programmes for the future seem unattractive, even dangerous, or incipiently dictatorial. But for the most part, younger people are less likely to have experienced those defeats directly, only through the transmission of diminished expectations of the future. More problematically, the retreat from subjectivity assumes an organisational form. Social institutions, like the growing numbers of counsellors, or the reorganisation of welfare and legal systems on the basis of ‘childrens’s rights’ gives a solidity to the retreat from subjectivity. Now vested interests exist to deny the expression of subjective action.

Despite these difficulties, the subjective factor is by no means eliminated from human society; it merely persists in wilful denial of its own existence and import. Ironically, human endeavour has attained some of its greatest achievements in this period of generally lowered expectations. It is only in recent times that physical hunger ceased to be a consideration for the populations of the developed countries of Europe and America, and the means exist to eradicate it completely, thanks to innovations in agriculture. Improvements in healthcare have brought increasing life expectancy not just to the developed world but to the underdeveloped as well. Technological advances make it conceivable that more of society’s available time can be dedicated not just to recreating our animal existence, but to developing our cultural lives, freed from the realm of mere necessity. Communications technologies are making the physical barriers between societies less meaningful, at least in the transmission of ideas and information.

All of these spectacular advances could become the means of sustaining and transmitting a depressed society that is preoccupied with its own powerlessness. But that would be contrary to the real meaning of those advances. Though human subjectivity persists in denial of its own existence, it is nonetheless the single most powerful force at work in society and nature. To attain full consciousness of its own potential would itself increase that potential exponentially.