The sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of pre-capitalism, together with technological and social differentiation or specialisation, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.

-- Those evil Frankfurt Schoolers

Once upon a time, it was commonly imagined, the unity of the tribe in shared fantasy, in myth, was the basis for the rule of the God-King, who insured the security of The People. The various and sundry myths of the various and sundry peoples also answered basic questions, and so for instance the Book of Genesis (literally, "beginning"). How did the world begin? God, or rather King-God, created the world -- well, that's what the Book of Genesis said.

Now, we might also imagine, the image of the God-King, Yahweh or Zeus or Alexander the Great or Augustus or whomever, was an outgrowth of the invention of agriculture, which positioned the God-King as the symbolic protector of that all-important agricultural invention, the grain silo. The grain silo assured the indefinite supply of bread to The People regardless of weather variation. In that regard, the grain silo needed to be protected from invading tribes of "other" people who wanted to take the grain from "us." Thus began the competition between tribes, which continues to this day.

The Romans, in this regard, appeared as a universal tribe, a tribe which settled the competition between tribes by declaring a winner. In the Romans' case, the God-King was an "imperator" or Emperor, also, literally, "commander." You did what he said.

Today, however, the universal tribe is the human race, more or less a human race universally Americanized through dollar hegemony. In place of an emperor, the world has an oligarchy, basically the transnational capitalist class. And, in place of myth, we have capitalism, the Utopia of Money, as the circulating religion for the dominant myths of money, property, and commodities. "They own you," as George Carlin would have said.

However, behind the Utopia of Money there must also be myths explaining basic questions, just as the Book of Genesis explained the universe for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. In this regard, the basic questions are handled through identity. Identity explains how the world came to be possessed by "sovereign individuals" as real estate -- God created special people, which is to say the rich. Identity justifies privatization and political rip-off and -- basically -- makes the world meaningful insofar as it is "about me" for a wealthy few while indefinitely increasing rates and fees for those of us who must of necessity be their clients.

At this point you may wonder why I do not call it "identity politics." Identity politics is an application of identity. Identity politics asserts everyone's right to be their own God-King, a narcissist, an owner. Identity politics gives us grifters like Ibram X. Kendi, the topic of a comment of mine in which I said:

And so, for instance, Ibram X. Kendi's book How to Be an Antiracist is all about who is and who isn't a racist, as if it mattered, which it doesn't. The well-sourced summary of Kendi's argument given in Wikipedia is concise:

Kendi argues that the opposite of racist is anti-racist rather than simply non-racist, and that there is no middle ground in the struggle against racism; one is either actively confronting racial inequality or allowing it to exist through action or inaction.

Everyone, of course, "allows racism to exist" every hour of every day, and "being a racist" or "being an antiracist" is of no importance in this regard. I'm trying to imagine what antiracist politics of this sort would have looked like in the Sixties, but fortunately for history there was no consensus in the SCLC to say anything remotely similar to "we should be against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, because Lyndon Johnson is a racist." One should note in this regard that Lyndon Johnson was indeed a racist -- a really ugly one -- though he did end the apartheid regime in the South by forcing through Congress the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other such accompanying legislation.

Of course, a brief Google search of Kendi will reveal a takedown of his thinking in the Black Agenda Report, and a rather laudatory blurb on him attached to the World Economic Forum webpage.

The antidote to identity politics is creative politics. Creative politics would enable the use of the human imagination not towards a conformist society stuck on late capitalism (as it was once stuck on the worship of God-Kings), but rather, something better, something more sustainable and humanistic. Until such time as a creative politics can be developed that goes beyond its last serious attempt -- Occupy -- what we will see in the world will be not merely identity politics but, more severely, the society based on identity, in which you are offered a small smorgasbord of choices as to how the NSA is to regard you. (Being "against identity politics" will be one of those choices.) And so:

1) "Wokeness" and its twin "anti-wokeness," in which, on the one hand, you have corporate diversity efforts disempowering the workers while on the other hand you have Ron DeSantis and his Florida buddies making a career of opposing it.

2) Disney's corporate effort to turn its products into usually-unpopular "woke" nonsense at the expense of what little creativity hadn't yet been sacrificed to production deadlines, and so for instance:

(In viewing such videos one must remember that the patriarchy is in fact real enough, especially in the global periphery -- and its promotion in movies and literature was once also real enough -- but that its opposition must also contend with garbage corporate efforts to "oppose" it.)

3) Twin corporate "news" media, CNN or FOX "News," identifying audiences by political party so that echo chambers can be provided for each.

4) Corporate use of Internet "cookies" to bias the content provided to users (that's YOU) based upon past searches.

And so on. The key to each of these points is that identity has become a buttonhole. Here's how it works in politics: politics is reduced to voting, voting to the lesser of two evils, and public opinion to demographics. And demographic studies explain the myths people believe, the God-Kings they revere, and the by-products of money they spend their adult lives pursuing.

Back in 1966 Theodor Adorno, the writer of that evil Frankfurt School quote at the top of this diary, wrote a long, tedious philosophical piece called Negative Dialectics. This was an analysis of texts nobody reads anymore which ended up as a screed against identity. People aren't, Adorno argued, what we identify them as being, despite the concerted effort to make said people into just that.