Ancient cynism is the mother of anarchy. It initially had a strong influence in Europe for almost 1000 years. Then it was pushed back by Pauline Christianity and with it the increasing belief in the state. With Erasmus of Rotterdam as Luther’s opponent, then with the Romantics as critics of the Enlightenment, and finally with Nietzsche, cynic became popular again and again. And today, the invisible hand of Cynic Resistance remains perhaps the last chance for a Promising Resistance against the Biopolitics of the allmighty states.
In the first part on this topic
Promising Resistance against Biopolitics
I wrote that a life aligned with parrhesia is a very strong form of resistance.
Readers asked if I could seriously believe that resistance needed no organization, no party, no secret society. Here is the answer:
The Invisible Hand argument serves as an explanation for the functioning of capitalism. However, Adam Smith, from whom this argument comes, among others, was a moral theologian. The Invisible Hand refers to the hand of God, who ensures that everyone’s needs are met better than any central state, if everyone just does their own job. Even if liberals would like it to be so: of course, the Invisible Hand is not only a criticism of any intervention of the state in the economy, but against the necessity of central rule in any form at all. Anything else would be silly.
A look at history shows that when the time was ripe, certain developments appeared not only in one place, but worldwide. And I still remember how amazed I was when my friend Hannelore, whom I had not spoken to for half a year, went through the same development completely independently of me. We were both apolitical at first, interested only in personal development and involvement in Encounter groups. Half a year later I was living as an anarchist in a commune in Bochum. And Hannelore, get this, had only also become an anarchist and was also living in a commune, but in Hamburg.
Marx would reduce such phenomena to the influence of the state of the means of production. But this is, of course, nonsense. What he correctly recognized, however, is that there is a history that eludes superficial mechanics.
World betterment is not our job
For us cynics the assumption of an invisible hand of God on our individual life is natural. We trust and build on our good nature.
And it is just as self-evident that God or nature not only has the individual in mind, but also coordinates resistance with an invisible hand, if it is to happen. Cynics, stoics and romantics alike refuse to want to improve the world.
Our resistance is therefore — by its very nature — not aimed at preventing global climate change, overcoming patriarchy or introducing communism. Such attempts are always attempts to replace the invisible hand with central measures of domination.
Our job is solely to take care of our self-realization. The whole — and quite decisively important — rest is not our problem. That regulates the invisible hand of the cynical resistance. If you are a cynic, you trust it. Otherwise you know more than we do. And then we meet in the fight on opposing sides, we on the side of freedom, of anarchism, you on the side of the state, of Levithan, no matter how this monster tries to mask itself.
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