So let's return to the initial question: What is an individual human being? Our cultural inability to come to any substantial clarity on this question is inseparable from our inability to overcome hierarchical politics and tyranny. This is why the first question in the definition of anarchism is the question of the individual human being.
Does anarchism, as a historical philosophy and praxis, have a set definition of the individual human being developed in precise detail? No, it doesn't. What it has is a consistent and relentless intuition at its foundation that the individual human being is the priceless crux of the question of human freedom and development. So if I attempt to develop a more precise definition of the individual human being within the historical anarchist context, I am not going against the grain of anarchism, I am rather highlighting and amplifying a core principle at a time when this issue is maximally relevant.
Anything capable of distinctive response or reaction contains some degree of individual reality. A rock reacts to the impact of a hammer. It is the reaction that tells us that the rock is there; that there is an individual rock. The person with the hammer might not reflectively attribute much significance to the reaction of the rock to the hammer blow, but in fact that reaction is a defining factor in that person's reality. The more aware one becomes of the rock, the more particular and individual the rock becomes. It is not just a rock, it is sandstone or granodiorite or something to distinguish it within the category of 'rock'. If one keeps following this process one begins to consciously approach the unavoidable identity of a rock. All rocks are unique, but all rocks are rocks. The individual identity and the group identity are inseparable. As one identity-aspect of the rock becomes more intensely experienced in consciousness the other also becomes more intensely experienced in consciousness. This happens within consciousness. What is consciousness? It is the core feature of a human being and it is always individual. The farther we move away from the individual consciousness of a human being in philosophy or praxis, the farther we move away from the reality of the individual human being. Statistical humans have no consciousness. The public has no consciousness. The only valid form of humans as a group is the relationship between conscious individual human beings. Whenever the individual consciousness of a human being is side-stepped, for whatever reason, that human being has been rendered expendable and we are functioning within hierarchy and without respect for the individual human being. We are functioning within non-reality, which is the road to the hell of the destruction of humanness. And in this society, we do this constantly without even thinking about it.
The beginning of anarchy is the decision that no human individuality is ever expendable.
So, what is consciousness itself? One of the tasks of anarchist individuality/community is to begin probing this question more deeply than heretofore. This is crucial because without this probing the anarchist individuality/community will run out of growth space and it will once again begin to wastefully stumble within issues that are not real as it did in the proliferation of anarchist 'schools'.
If you want to know what my contribution is to this question concerning consciousness itself then I would direct you, as an introduction only, to my OEN article on Oligarch Nihilism.
But what must be seen here is that the constructive implementation of the anarchist principles, which includes the strategic movement against the nation state and against the super-nation state of the oligarch NOW, is necessarily limited by the anarchist individual/community's depth of perception of reality itself, including consciousness. Anarchism must begin supplying a wider range of exploration and answers to a wider range of questions that confront human development. Anarchism has historically been mostly a response to political structure within human life. Anarchism must begin to move beyond this limited context into greater depths of human experience. Humans don't just need ways of dealing with political obstruction; we need more meaningful ways of addressing realities such as our own mortality and the fear that it poisons human consciousness with. Anarchy has defined itself as a social-ordering process through the sanctity of the individual human being. It must begin defining itself as a more deeply existential process of discovering and generating meaning. We as anarchists must begin addressing the question of what consciousness is and how conscious individuals relate to each other or we will never create a real and enduring community of free individuals.
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