Logos and Liberation

I'm excited to share with you what I've been working on for the past four years. My book Logos and Liberation: The Path of Kenosis is available now through Amazon and other major distributors. It's the result of years of research, study, contemplation, spanning fields from philosophy and metaphysics to economics and social science to ecology and systems theory to theology.

My analysis is centered around the ancient idea of the Logos - the transcendent ordering principle by which the cosmos unfolds and by which we ourselves are able to reason about the cosmos. I argue that we have fallen into a false Logos of power and domination, and the true Logos can be found through a path of kenosis, or self-emptying. We seek to impose our will upon the world rather than cooperate with nature and with one another. The original sin, the Fall from grace, is a kind of grasping for control. We work against nature rather than with it. We hoard resources for ourselves rather than share with our neighbor. We seek power-over rather than power-with.

This grasping for power was institutionalized through systems of domination and exploitation, including patriarchy, slavery, and empire. These were brought together in the Bronze Age through what Lewis Mumford called the "megamachine." This was not a machine of metal and gears, but the mechanization of society. First there was the military machine, which disciplined troops into a cohesive unit that would follow orders without question and carry out the will of the sovereign. With this power of violence in place, the whole of society could be mechanized, which was used to construct the vast wonders of the ancient world such as pyramids and ziggurats. The people who built these wonders were every bit as much parts in a machine as any pulley or lever. These wonders were made possible by the machine, but the machine also required them for its justification. By creating wonders that outlasted its makers, the machine offered the people a sense of immortality by virtue of their participation.

This megamachine was challenged by the rise of philosophy and world religions during what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age. Figures such as Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, and the prophets of Israel each in their own way perceived the transcendent Logos behind all things. Under the ancient megamachine, power itself was divine, a Logos unto itself, and the will of the sovereign was identical with this Logos for as long as they held power. What the great figures of the Axial Age perceived was an order beyond power, to which society itself must be aligned. It was a standard against which sovereignty itself could be judged.

The sovereign sought to present their power as in accordance with this Logos, but their power itself could no longer be the standard by which this could be judged. The megamachine began to fade. Yet it saw a resurgence in the modern era with the rise of capitalism, industrialism, and the nation-state. Technocratic thought arose through markets and state bureaucracy, overcoding reason into a kind of instrumental rationality. The cosmos itself was conceived as a vast machine. An organic concept of the cosmos was turned into a clockwork universe, held together by moving parts. A deterministic universe governed by immutable laws governed not only physics but biology, history, psychology, politics, and economics.

The machine model expressed itself as bureaucratic rationality, economism, and scientism. The megamachine could only survive by expanding, and it spread to all corners of the Earth. It manifested as mass production, industrial agriculture, centralized power, human warehousing, and the instrumental cost-benefit analysis. People are treated as resources and inputs in an abstract system of production and consumption. This megamachine extended not only to capitalism, but even its opponents. The Soviet bloc may have disagreed with the capitalist West about markets, profit, and private enterprise, but they each in their own way embodied the megamachine. Each treated production as an end in itself, to which personal dignity and autonomy were subsumed. Today, a global system of nation-states, corporations, and international organizations competes for power, labor, resources, supply chains, and markets. People become mere tools in the service of accumulation, which is driving us toward the precipice of extinction.

There is another way. The false Logos of power, domination, and exploitation can only be overcome by rediscovering the true Logos, which can be known by the sign of kenosis, or self-emptying. Where the megamachine imposes, the Logos unfolds. By softening our egoic need for control, we become open to this unfolding process that can be found through cooperation with nature and with one another. In contrast to the mechanistic paradigm, an organic order is revealed, based on self-organization, habit, memory, creativity, and synergy. Nature is ecological: its strength is diversity. This is the nature of the Logos. Society, too, must be ecological. Murray Bookchin observed that our relationship with nature is determined by our social relations. A society based on the domination of people with seek to dominate nature as well. In turn, a harmonious relationship with nature requires a harmonious relationship with one another.

Rather than territorial nation-states competing for dominance, we can have confederated communes governed by popular councils. Rather than extractive industrial agriculture we can have abundant regenerative permaculture. Rather than cities planned by rent-seeking developers and technocratic planners, we can have democratically planned cities that belong to all who live there. Rather than standardized education designed to train future workers and loyal citizens, we can have pedagogy directed toward the holistic formation of the person. Rather than a system of infinite growth based on accumulation by dispossession, we can restore the commons for the benefit of all.

Religion must transform as well. The Axial traditions challenged the ancient megamachine, but the institutions they spawned have all too often been forces of oppression in their own right. It has served to legitimize and reinforce abusive power and systems of domination, but the religious imagination can also guide us toward liberation. Religion must undergo its own kenosis, shedding itself of clericalism and affirming the movement of Spirit within the people.

A kenotic faith in the Logos can guide us toward the World to Come. The megamachine limits the imagination, but faith in the World to Come can inspire the imagination and guide us toward liberation. Together we can work toward a world where many worlds fit, in which human dignity is affirmed and we can all bring our unique abilities to their highest realization. The eschaton awaits.