I apologise for not posting for 10 days but I have been here there and everywhere. I am posting this on Christmas Day because this day has a huge significance in so many ways. As anyone who reads this blog will know, I consider that the individualist philosophy underpinning the free market neoliberal narrative has nothing of any value to offer us and is intellectually bankrupt. One of the significant aspects of Christmas is how it demonstrates so graphically the social nature of the human being. Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan etc. are all testament to the need for people to establish collective celebrations that define collective essences, such as a religion, a geographic region, an ethnic grouping etc. The human being is a collective being and, as I have said before, their individuality is a reflection of their collective existence and socialisation. Thus, philosophies of individuality that fail to start from the acceptance of the social nature of the human have little or no relevance. That is why the modern dominant narrative of economic and political neoliberalism is bankrupt and why Thatcher's famous dictum that there is no such thing as society is in essence simply stupid.
Humans cling to their observances with a quite irrational passion whether they have any bearing on reality or not. Take Christmas for example. The authority for Christmas supposedly comes from the Christian religion, and the authority for the religion supposedly comes from the Christian Bible. However, if we actually consult the Bible we will find that Christians have been given particular days that must be observed as holy, and the birth of Jesus Christ is definitely not one of them. So, where does the authority for this 'holy' day come from? In addition, why the 25th December? If we consult the Bible we discover that Christ must have been born in the 30 day period between what we today call the second week in September and the second week in October. He could not possibly have been born in December. So why do we celebrate this day, and place it above all other days as a celebration of the Christian message? In addition, our calendar is dated from the birth of Christ and we will pass into the 2016th year since Christ was born next week. But, actually we wont, because Christ must have been born five years earlier that our history tells us. The Bible again tells us that Christ's parents were warned to flee Judea after his birth because the king, Herod the Great was searching for him with the intention of killing him. Herod the Great died in 4BC. Also, the Christian calendar begins on 1AD and the year previous is designated as 1BC. There is no year zero in our calendar with the result that we consider that Christ was one year old the day he was born. This results in the Christian world indulging in a mass celebration of an event that they have no religious authority to celebrate, on the wrong day and in the wrong year. But does it matter?
I personally don't think so because we are really not celebrating a religious festival. If I know such things then so must the people who believe in Christianity and so they must be aware that they are celebrating what is in effect a fraud. What we are celebrating is the collective essence we regard as our human society, just as all religions and secular societies do in a myriad of diverse ways.. In Britain we have the celebration of the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament, Americans have Thanksgiving for the survival of the Founding Fathers. What humans do is celebrate their collective survival and existence in many forms, but it is society they are celebrating, the society that Thatcher claims does not exist. That is why the modern neoliberal is so desperate to desacrilise society as they think that by doing that they will destroy the concept of the social. But that will never happen. It will not stop them however, and it is only a matter of a few years until Christmas ceases to be a public holiday and everyone has to work on Christmas Day. If there was a God, I am confident that David Cameron would have been struck down dead when he claimed that Britain was a Christian nation. If Britain is a Christian nation and there are any real Christians in this Tory government, then Christianity is a deeply disturbed belief system. So, roll on next Christmas and all the other observances that celebrate the human social condition, by their very existence they ensure that the dominant free market individualism will perish because it is anti-social and anti-Christ. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
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