Some Thoughts on Anonymity

(i.e., being a nobody)

I have always been impressed by the polis (city-state) because Socrates was able to acquire everlasting fame as a philosopher without having to write. Socrates was not a well-born man, but his great worth gave him access to the leading and most interesting men of Athens. That is, he was able to rise without having to be one of these lackey social strivers larger more centralized societies produce.

Anonymity kills the human spirit in much the same way slavery does. Anonymity and slavery are always combined in mass society, even if men are called “workers” instead of slaves. There is some psychological value to being able to say “I am a free man who can choose what job I do.” Choosing ones job or work distinguishes the worker from the slave, so long as work is respectable. But work is never respectable when the worker is a nobody.

The communist criticism of capitalism is right in one way but only “in one way.” The anonymous worker is legally free but this is more or less meaningless because he still has to work the job and the job is terrible and deforms him. A man who has to work in a factory doing a single task repeatedly for decades loses some or all of his humanity. His legal freedom is laughable and insulting. Meaningless legal freedom is insulting because it hides from public discourse the true state of “the worker.” This is a communist leftist criticism of American jurisprudence and legal norms. The leftists have been winning with this argument for decades now because our legal system was made for different kinds of men—independent men. So in a time when there is centralized wealth and centralized political power, it becomes laughable to speak of “legal freedom” for the hundreds of millions anonymous workers who are not independent and never will be. The communist draws the wrong conclusion from this however. The answer is not some even more massive world-society, but a more “decentralized” world where independent groups of men strive for preeminence. That is, in smaller independent societies even lower forms of work are bearable because the man means more in those situations. We never had poleis (city-states) in America but we had States and Townships.

I view Strauss’ “school” as his polis; his school carries his name forward and the names of many others benefit from this founding act. Strauss speaks several times of a “philosophic fatherland” in his books on Xenophon.

Everyone is dimly aware that fame means nothing when you’re dead. That doesn’t persuade me anonymity (being a nobody) is bearable when you’re alive. Someone with the magnitude of Strauss acquires glory doing what the rest of us do when we look for friends. Life without your friends, or a genuine community like a township or some meaningful “private association” is unbearable in the way slavery is unbearable.

Americans love reading Tocqueville because he reminds us of a world where the Township was powerful. Furthermore, this America was before the Civil War and much before “Civil Rights”--so there were not only townships, but private associations were also plentiful and free to determine what membership meant.

Living in a society where exclusion is outlawed means you are a nobody and do not live in the society that excludes and rules over your society.