oikeion, or a life that is so: an anarchical solution to modern alienation

By kal mehta

To be alien in one’s own body is an age-old horror story; the instinctive fear that courses through you when you blink and the figure in the mirror does not close its eyes, and you realize that something is very, very wrong. Consider ophiocordyceps, the infamous ant-preying fungus; picture a tiny spore taking root in the brain and growing its way through the nervous system. You are an ant and your legs do not move when you want them to. You are an ant and your pincers click of their own accord; you watch as your body inches its way towards a friend and you try to scream when you are filled with a hunger that is distinctly not yours. Yet your body makes no sound. This is no way to live, to be this thing that you are; unsettlingly out of place, lost in the distortion between you and your physical existence. 

It is no wonder, then, that beyond the ancients’ extollations of ecstatic pleasure and the satisfactions of virtuous productivity lay a third conception of happiness as a sense of feeling at home. The Greeks called it ataraxia, literally freedom from trouble or anxiety (Striker, 1990, p. 97): the Buddhists gave a similar concept to the name sukkha (Thera, 2017). Mind and body turn together as well-oiled gears in a machine: or to sidestep the mires of dualism, one may envision a more generic total harmony of being. Perhaps the Buddhists would frown at my language of machination; this is a state of natural balance and total harmony, a stability that arises from things being the way they should. You lift a hand in front of the bathroom sink and your reflection waves back at you. All is well. 

In his seminal 2008 work The Pursuit of Unhappiness Dan Haybron christens this dimension attunement, or “making oneself fully at home in one’s life” (Haybron, 2008, p.112). Being at peace with the world is not an unfamiliar theoretical concept in the modern day, yet a sense of “settledness”, as Haybron puts it, appears an oddly reticent impression of reality. The idea of finding one’s life oikeion, familiar, as the Stoics would have put it, taunts us. But why?

Your body has never been as simple as flesh and bone. You are electricity in a carbon cage, and you are but a cell in the sinew of the human communities you belong to. To misquote Durkheim, you are a thinking part of the psychic reality that is society: you exist in the context of your environment. And to misuse Aristotle, I express that community is the tissue of the state; man is a political animal. Your body is, in at least one of its forms, an abbreviation of the state. It suffices to summarize the intuition; your experience of existence is defined by the state, which structures every aspect of the world you live in. And so the state and your life are intertwined, and the state as an extension of your body is an arguably acceptable if debatably palatable reality. There are harder images to stomach, so I progress; we place the concept of attunement within a current manifestation of body and state and balk. 

It does not fit. The modern state fascinates for its utter dereliction with regards to tranquility. You are not happy, and in oikeion lies a rebuke: I will argue that you could be happier. Following this I draw upon a poetically disruptive doctrine to say that you could be happier if you were master of your own body-state, or physical reality. Politics is, after all, not so distinguishable from philosophy. 

Consider the modern political state of being. We live in states defined by hierarchical authority: you are (typically) a civilian, a member of a society, managed by a regional government, who reports to a higher national government, and so on. Now this authority asserts itself through laws; networks of rules that regulate your behavior, enforced by state-equipped forces like the police. In theory, we are led to believe that this system exists to ensure that we can live worry-free. You’re safe; the police are here! 

Reality is not so pleasant. 

Think about it, really; how much of the current global population would actually feel reassured if a police officer showed up on their doorstep? To quote American educator Stephen West; suppose you’re driving a car and a police car comes up behind you, lights flashing. Your first thought probably isn’t “I’m so grateful the police are here to keep our roads safe!”. No, it’s something along the lines of “Oh shit, what am I doing wrong? Will they pull me over?” 

Given the current global context, we have a particularly strong case to be made for the cruelty of state-sponsored violence. Consider the police murders of Black people in America or police cruelty to peaceful protesters in “democracies” across the world; Argentina, the UK, my own India. Reality is that when you have a force that is given absolute authority this force is applied disproportionately to people of certain incomes and backgrounds; reality is the stress of discrimination and the fear of pain. 

Top-down governance by the rule of law has another, more insidious effect. Consider the idea of a community. We live in a world where, more so than ever, the individual takes precedence over society. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han reflects this idea in his conception of the modern burnout society; you work and you work and you die, but more importantly, you work alone. We live in little cement capsules often miles away from the people we know. It’s harder and harder to “love thy neighbour”; do you even know your neighbour? No, you shrug and turn back to your phone. I know plenty of people; look, I’m texting a friend right now. Who the hell knows who they live next to? 

And so the community ceases to be connected by social bonds. Your neighbour is having a loud, loud party, and you have to call the police to come by and tell them to keep it down. Consider the insanity; “at almost every point in human history before this, if you’re living next door to someone and they’re having a party, you’re most likely invited to that party” (West, 2024). Instead, the relationship between you and the people you live feet away from is outsourced to the state. A stranger is a safety hazard, and you are surrounded by strangers. The police become the tactical arm of the state (Gelderloos): the state will keep you safe, the state has a monopoly on conflict resolution (West, 2024). Reality is constant surveillance and constant danger. 

Here you are, enclosed in a body where you will find no comfort. You are being watched and you must always keep watch. Here you are, in front of a mirror, watching your eyes refuse to slide shut. You do not rightfully belong here; at any moment you may be taken away, and so you must live with the horror of your position within a state that rails against you at any step out of line, any word misspoken. You must live brutally out of tune with the world that surrounds you; you must live unhappy. 

It could end here, but given that to be oikeion is, at least, a significant piece of the logistical puzzle that is happiness, and that I assume you want to be happy, it seems cruel. Can we live like this? I argue that we are certainly surviving like this, but to exist amidst this existential horror is a rather unenviable life. 

Conveniently, there exists a philosophy designed by its very nature to undermine the forces of hierarchical authority. Anarchy, in its tamest incarnation, may be characterised as a system of power where any entity in a position of power must constantly justify its position (Chomsky, 2014). Though the scope of this article does not include an argument for an anarchical state I will clarify that anarchy is not total chaos, nor is it the absence of power. Anarchy simply debates that the panoptic walls created by the top-down enforcement of authority are a necessary evil. You are an individual surrounded by other individuals who share a society; if your bodies are abbreviations of the state you must be able to determine the function of the state to be master of your own bodies. Anarchy eliminates Big Brother. The replacement of a top-down hierarchy with bottom-up organisation gives individuals voices and can serve to smooth the warp between person and state that the constant stress of the enforcement of authority begets. 

You are not happy, and you could be happier: a re-integration of you and your physical home. A sense of tranquility facilitated by the workings of the system you live by, rather than a never-ending alienation. Perhaps anarchy is a solution; until then we recognise the root of the problem, and wonder at the value of a society antithetical to our personal attunement. 

References

Carls, P. (n.d.). Émile Durkheim (1858—1917). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved March 31, 2024, from https://iep.utm.edu/emile-durkheim/

Haybron, D. (2008). The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Oxford University Press.

Haybron, D. (2013). Happiness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Philosophy, C. (2014, September 25). Noam Chomsky – Anarchism I [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Bv2MKY7uI

Striker, G. (1990). Ataraxia: Happiness as Tranquility. The Monist, 73, 97-110. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903171

Thera, N. T. (1946). Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines (N. Thera, Ed.; 2017 ed.). Pariyatti Publishing.

West, S. (Host). (2024, January 27). Do we really need the police? – Anarchist pt. 3 – (Gelderloos, Security) (No. 194) [Audio podcast episode]. In Philosophize This! Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LYk5by6nFCRwtiDfN38XI?si=54c82c355d6641bf

To be alien in one’s own body is an age-old horror story; the instinctive fear that courses through you when you blink and the figure in the mirror does not close its eyes, and you realize that something is very, very wrong. Consider ophiocordyceps, the infamous ant-preying fungus; picture a tiny spore taking root in the brain and growing its way through the nervous system. You are an ant and your legs do not move when you want them to. You are an ant and your pincers click of their own accord; you watch as your body inches its way towards a friend and you try to scream when you are filled with a hunger that is distinctly not yours. Yet your body makes no sound. This is no way to live, to be this thing that you are; unsettlingly out of place, lost in the distortion between you and your physical existence. 

It is no wonder, then, that beyond the ancients’ extollations of ecstatic pleasure and the satisfactions of virtuous productivity lay a third conception of happiness as a sense of feeling at home. The Greeks called it ataraxia, literally freedom from trouble or anxiety (Striker, 1990, p. 97): the Buddhists gave a similar concept to the name sukkha (Thera, 2017). Mind and body turn together as well-oiled gears in a machine: or to sidestep the mires of dualism, one may envision a more generic total harmony of being. Perhaps the Buddhists would frown at my language of machination; this is a state of natural balance and total harmony, a stability that arises from things being the way they should. You lift a hand in front of the bathroom sink and your reflection waves back at you. All is well. 

In his seminal 2008 work The Pursuit of Unhappiness Dan Haybron christens this dimension attunement, or “making oneself fully at home in one’s life” (Haybron, 2008, p.112). Being at peace with the world is not an unfamiliar theoretical concept in the modern day, yet a sense of “settledness”, as Haybron puts it, appears an oddly reticent impression of reality. The idea of finding one’s life oikeion, familiar, as the Stoics would have put it, taunts us. But why?

Your body has never been as simple as flesh and bone. You are electricity in a carbon cage, and you are but a cell in the sinew of the human communities you belong to. To misquote Durkheim, you are a thinking part of the psychic reality that is society: you exist in the context of your environment. And to misuse Aristotle, I express that community is the tissue of the state; man is a political animal. Your body is, in at least one of its forms, an abbreviation of the state. It suffices to summarize the intuition; your experience of existence is defined by the state, which structures every aspect of the world you live in. And so the state and your life are intertwined, and the state as an extension of your body is an arguably acceptable if debatably palatable reality. There are harder images to stomach, so I progress; we place the concept of attunement within a current manifestation of body and state and balk. 

It does not fit. The modern state fascinates for its utter dereliction with regards to tranquility. You are not happy, and in oikeion lies a rebuke: I will argue that you could be happier. Following this I draw upon a poetically disruptive doctrine to say that you could be happier if you were master of your own body-state, or physical reality. Politics is, after all, not so distinguishable from philosophy. 

Consider the modern political state of being. We live in states defined by hierarchical authority: you are (typically) a civilian, a member of a society, managed by a regional government, who reports to a higher national government, and so on. Now this authority asserts itself through laws; networks of rules that regulate your behavior, enforced by state-equipped forces like the police. In theory, we are led to believe that this system exists to ensure that we can live worry-free. You’re safe; the police are here! 

Reality is not so pleasant. 

Think about it, really; how much of the current global population would actually feel reassured if a police officer showed up on their doorstep? To quote American educator Stephen West; suppose you’re driving a car and a police car comes up behind you, lights flashing. Your first thought probably isn’t “I’m so grateful the police are here to keep our roads safe!”. No, it’s something along the lines of “Oh shit, what am I doing wrong? Will they pull me over?” 

Given the current global context, we have a particularly strong case to be made for the cruelty of state-sponsored violence. Consider the police murders of Black people in America or police cruelty to peaceful protesters in “democracies” across the world; Argentina, the UK, my own India. Reality is that when you have a force that is given absolute authority this force is applied disproportionately to people of certain incomes and backgrounds; reality is the stress of discrimination and the fear of pain. 

Top-down governance by the rule of law has another, more insidious effect. Consider the idea of a community. We live in a world where, more so than ever, the individual takes precedence over society. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han reflects this idea in his conception of the modern burnout society; you work and you work and you die, but more importantly, you work alone. We live in little cement capsules often miles away from the people we know. It’s harder and harder to “love thy neighbour”; do you even know your neighbour? No, you shrug and turn back to your phone. I know plenty of people; look, I’m texting a friend right now. Who the hell knows who they live next to? 

And so the community ceases to be connected by social bonds. Your neighbour is having a loud, loud party, and you have to call the police to come by and tell them to keep it down. Consider the insanity; “at almost every point in human history before this, if you’re living next door to someone and they’re having a party, you’re most likely invited to that party” (West, 2024). Instead, the relationship between you and the people you live feet away from is outsourced to the state. A stranger is a safety hazard, and you are surrounded by strangers. The police become the tactical arm of the state (Gelderloos): the state will keep you safe, the state has a monopoly on conflict resolution (West, 2024). Reality is constant surveillance and constant danger. 

Here you are, enclosed in a body where you will find no comfort. You are being watched and you must always keep watch. Here you are, in front of a mirror, watching your eyes refuse to slide shut. You do not rightfully belong here; at any moment you may be taken away, and so you must live with the horror of your position within a state that rails against you at any step out of line, any word misspoken. You must live brutally out of tune with the world that surrounds you; you must live unhappy. 

It could end here, but given that to be oikeion is, at least, a significant piece of the logistical puzzle that is happiness, and that I assume you want to be happy, it seems cruel. Can we live like this? I argue that we are certainly surviving like this, but to exist amidst this existential horror is a rather unenviable life. 

Conveniently, there exists a philosophy designed by its very nature to undermine the forces of hierarchical authority. Anarchy, in its tamest incarnation, may be characterised as a system of power where any entity in a position of power must constantly justify its position (Chomsky, 2014). Though the scope of this article does not include an argument for an anarchical state I will clarify that anarchy is not total chaos, nor is it the absence of power. Anarchy simply debates that the panoptic walls created by the top-down enforcement of authority are a necessary evil. You are an individual surrounded by other individuals who share a society; if your bodies are abbreviations of the state you must be able to determine the function of the state to be master of your own bodies. Anarchy eliminates Big Brother. The replacement of a top-down hierarchy with bottom-up organisation gives individuals voices and can serve to smooth the warp between person and state that the constant stress of the enforcement of authority begets. 

You are not happy, and you could be happier: a re-integration of you and your physical home. A sense of tranquility facilitated by the workings of the system you live by, rather than a never-ending alienation. Perhaps anarchy is a solution; until then we recognise the root of the problem, and wonder at the value of a society antithetical to our personal attunement. 

References

Carls, P. (n.d.). Émile Durkheim (1858—1917). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved March 31, 2024, from https://iep.utm.edu/emile-durkheim/

Haybron, D. (2008). The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Oxford University Press.

Haybron, D. (2013). Happiness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.

Philosophy, C. (2014, September 25). Noam Chomsky – Anarchism I [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Bv2MKY7uI

Striker, G. (1990). Ataraxia: Happiness as Tranquility. The Monist, 73, 97-110. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903171

Thera, N. T. (1946). Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines (N. Thera, Ed.; 2017 ed.). Pariyatti Publishing.

West, S. (Host). (2024, January 27). Do we really need the police? – Anarchist pt. 3 – (Gelderloos, Security) (No. 194) [Audio podcast episode]. In Philosophize This! Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5LYk5by6nFCRwtiDfN38XI?si=54c82c355d6641bf