Compound alienation and voluntary humiliation

The goal of the modern state is to produce a submissive individual who does not go beyond the frameworks and regulations. This obedient individual enjoys a margin of freedom that is also restricted, but this authority preserves his physical and psychological safety.

These are two entrances to dignity, which compensate for the freedoms it deprives him of with collective security, self-realization, personal freedom, and the promise of prosperity under construction, and place him before the terms of a social contract with clear features to some extent.

This authority is not without flaws, but it is not based on an individual with absolute authority. Rather, the authority is transferred to an institution. This legal entity shifts the confrontation between individuals towards a public discussion and confrontation with rulings, regulations and laws. The police officer is the one who holds authority not for himself, but for the legal institution to which he belongs. Objection to his authority is not an objection to his person, but to the regulations governing his work.

Here, a shift away from personalizing the conflict is achieved. This authority has not been spared from the rush to authoritarian encroachment, but rather technology and the enhancement of opportunities for monitoring and control make it omnipresent and comprehensive.

However, it is subject to review and preservation of freedom and rights, thus preserving human dignity, but the authority - similar to religious authority - which is based on a contract that means creating a submissive slave who is emotionally and spiritually alienated, there is no room for reform or reconciliation with its flaws.

Look at the individual who left the Houthi authority and how he behaves within the circles of sectarian alienation.

It is self-evident that within every group there is a sense of belonging and loyalty, and this loyalty can be rationalized in professional or partisan groups and sports clubs within the framework of a contract (implicit or explicit) that is mutually beneficial. Even the Yemeni tribe is based on a mutually beneficial contractual formula. In it, the distance between the leader and the led is recognized, and its most important constants are maintaining a special emotional and spiritual space because the relationship is fundamentally one of solidarity and the margin of power in it for whoever holds the leadership is limited and restricted.

However, loyalty in religious and sectarian groups is absolute loyalty based on crushing the follower. The follower sells himself, sacrifices himself and crushes himself. This individual, whose value is wasted once, will not hesitate to be included in a subsequent relationship of waste and crushing.

What we see from the behavior of some members of the Houthi group participating in the mourning ceremonies for Hassan Nasrallah, which some may denounce and despise, is in the view of the group a ritualistic situation and an affirmation of loyalty to a higher circle. Hassan was presenting all the signs and duties of loyalty and obedience to those who were higher than him in Iran and addressing him with the highest signs of reverence.

Because the relationship between the individual and his leader within the framework of this religious-political movement is a relationship based on love, reverence and deification, a reverence that extends to the leader, his comments and his human circles as well.

His ring, his meal, his shoes will be sacred things tomorrow. Those around him, his servants, and his entourage will also receive their share of sanctification.

These sectarian structures are only based on a relationship in which the subordinate is crushed and his human value is wasted. In the end, this voluntary slavery cannot establish a healthy society.

Because the crushed individual will look for another circle to exercise his power over and crush, and he will find no one better than his opponents to demonize, and here we find one of the sources of violence.

The contract that it imposes in principle does not preserve the individual's dignity or allocate an emotional distance between the superior and the subordinate, and this relationship is the complete opposite of rational authority.

They are happy with all this humiliation, and they will defend it, they defend it because it is an essential condition for their existence. If these religious political groups - and many others - submit to rationalizing the relationship between the individual and his leader, the doctrine/political entity will disappear.

It will disappear because it will escape from the state of hijacking religion. In principle, Islam appeared as a monotheistic belief that fights polytheism and organizes individuals within a comprehensive framework in which authority is horizontal. Rebuilding authority vertically means enslaving individuals, and this is a political-religious step.

*Quoted from the author's Facebook page