I am currently working on a manuscript where I attempt to unpack the phenomenology of strangeness and its sacramental power to mediate an epiphany of encounter. In it, I critique the ethics of care that empire mentality tends to produce which of itself is not intended to produce care. Rather, it tends to produce a paralysis in the other and a turn to sanctimonious sanctity in those who embrace such an ethics. True ethics of care must always operate within the locus of distance and agency on the part of the other. Too often, we are taught that to be a neighbor to the other is to bridge the existential gap that exists between the self and the other. This is very noticeable among professions that are rooted in altruism. Without the needed work done and a turn to radical self-awareness, the vice of control and egoism is couched in the guise of care for the other. At the end of the day, the outcome of such a process becomes the infantilization of the other. The erasure of their voice and agency. Is this not the case today in the so-called humanitarianism playing out in our world where communities at the peripheries of our world are further traumatized and alienated by the NGOs of our world that want to ‘fix’ what they perceive to be broken?
All attempts to ‘fix’ the other must first begin with the self who is doing the fixing. The first question that must be asked is this: what in my life has validated the matrix of erasure that the other is experiencing? This is a different question from the common one we tend to be familiar with, which states that the other is a problem that must be fixed. Before the other is a problem, the self is already embodying a double portion of problems.
Ethics of care must thus be oriented towards the self in a radical manner before it can even be presented to the other. I am sounding like Frederich Nietzsche here when I say that altruism is always narcissistic in its flip side.. Altruism is authentic when it centers the voice of the other. It must locate itself at the service of the other who embodies an agency of difference and the right to say NO! No does not mean a rejection of assistance. it is the centering of difference and the embrace of an epiphany of care that is grounded in the unfamiliar. If altruistic turn does not acknowledge this response, then it is narcissistic in content and purpose.
It is this truth that is central to the workings of the Trinitarian God. God gifts creation with intentionality that is grounded in freedom. God’s ethics of care finds its validity in the free choice of creation to be in relationship with God. Without this process, God would be considered narcissistic.
Reflection – January 23, 2024
Simon Aihiokhai Blogs 