Wave man
In this episode we explore the societal assertion that it is somehow shameful if our lives are not possessed by someone else
I’ve been spending the last few weeks revisiting old posts on my former main weblog, and sort-of mixing them up together - in part because doing that so often triggers off all manner of interesting insights. This time, I found a post called ‘Two words’ that brought up some parallels with the ‘masterless men’ of the early 1600s in England, who I’d mentioned earlier here back in the post ‘Not Soviet’.
The parallel between the two posts was around that notion of ‘the master’ - that odd remnant of feudalism that was so openly rejected by those ‘masterless men’ of the 1600s, yet that still hangs around like a bad smell even today. In particular, it was about the apparent notion that ‘the master’ has a '‘right’ to own others’ lives - and, conversely, that it is a matter of shame on our part if we fail to be ‘owned’ by some master.
In the present day, that typically takes the form of social blaming-and-shaming for failing to be employed - ‘owned’ - by some other organisation: the stigma of ‘unemployment’ and suchlike. The second part of that ‘Two words’ post took a look at the implications of another variant on the same theme, namely the Japanese term rōnin. According to the Wikipedia entry:
The word rōnin literally means ‘wave man’. That, however, is an idiomatic expression that means ‘vagrant’ or ‘wandering man’, someone who is without a home. The term [also] came to be used for a samurai who had no master. (Hence, the term ‘wave man’ illustrating one who is socially adrift.)
(The Wikipedia entry also comments that “In modern Japanese usage, the term also describes a salaryman who is ‘between employers'“ - which links us back to the present day.)
Well, I probably wouldn’t describe myself as much of a ‘warrior’, in any sense of the term. But yes, ‘wandering man’, or “one who is without a home”? – both of those would seem to fit me well enough, and each in a fair few senses too.
Likewise for ‘masterless’, or ‘one without a master’ – I’ve always been too much of an anarchist to accept from anyone any arbitrary ill-thought-through orders that don’t make real-world sense. And ‘a salaryman who is ‘between employers'” might also fit, I suppose – at least in the sense that although I’ve never yet been a ‘salaryman’, I’ve always been ‘between’, in one sense or another.
Yet of all of the descriptions above, ‘one who is socially adrift’ is probably the most accurate meaning for me there. Almost from the very beginning, I’ve always felt or found myself in the role of the Outsider, one who does not fit whatever it is that’s there to fit to. I’ve never felt that I really belonged anywhere, or with anyone – or, perhaps the inverse, that it’s seemed there’s never been any place or person that’s particularly wanted me to belong there.
(Whether that’s factually ‘true’ or not would barely matter here: the core is that feelings are facts in their own way, as I’ve discussed on that weblog several times over the years)
For example, to me it certainly feels that, right now, as a perennial 'Outsider’, perhaps none of that well-known ‘list of human needs’ – “someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work, something to hope for” – would really apply anywhere within my own life, and quite possibly never have. So yeah, for me at least, and for so many others that I know, ‘one who is socially adrift’ is an all too accurate descriptor: a rōnin in that sense at least. And yes, that too feeds the of ‘Outsider’ - feeding a downward-spiral, if we’re not careful. And one to which social pressure and social-exclusion also often makes things worse. Quite a challenge there.
Yet there’s one part of that description of the rōnin that doesn’t make sense to me - and that’s that it’s a status that’s supposedly shameful’
One who chose not to honor the code was ‘on his own’ and was meant to suffer great shame. The undesirability of rōnin status was mainly a discrimination imposed by other samurai and by the feudal lords.
I’ll admit that I see it as more the other way round: that it’s the status of ‘possessed’ by some self-styled ‘feudal lord’ or ‘master’ that should be the real source of shame. Why on earth would anyone give up all of the choices in – or even of – their own life, to some parasite who steals the surplus-value from everyone else’s labour, as a purported ‘feudal right’?
The whole notion of a ‘master’ was a sick con-trick in feudal times, held together by little more than shaming and social-discrimination, coupled with literally violent control of the culture’s resources. The similarly sick scam of ’employment’ is probably no better in these times - in fact arguably worse in many ways, with much of it held together by the equally sick myths and manipulations of the money-economy. Shame indeed, and entrapment too, for almost everyone: but it seems that, for now, we’re still stuck with it, whether we wish it or not. Yet it’s probable now that this manipulative, dishonest shame-game is so deeply embedded in our culture that the only way to end it would be to eradicate the entire possession-economy itself - much as we’ve explored in previous episodes here.
And whether supposedly ‘shameful’ or not, that role of the Outsider is essential, because without it, no social change is possible. Nor response to change, either, when change is forced upon us - as now seems certain that it will be, in very large scale, somewhen Real Soon Now.
So be the rōnin, celebrating your freedom from the self-styled ‘master’; be the wave man, riding the waves of change away from this parasitic present. And challenge that shame-game of ‘the masters’ at every chance we can.
(This episode was adapted in part from my 2015 post on the Tetradian weblog, ‘Two words’.)