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Simone Weil elaborates on the ideaI might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes...
The need for meaning has been passed from striving to awaken to individuality to the authority of the grand collective that thinks for you. This great human animal called the Beast follows the cycles of life as described in Ecclesiastes 3 including war and peace. The only thing which can minimize the horrors of this part of the cycle is the conscious influence of true individuality – that which is consciously more than a reacting atom of the Great Beast. They appear to be a dying breed being consumed by the Beast. Will their conscious influence remain alive underground sufficiently to minimize the cycle? The need for self destruction as a lawful part of the Beast's natural cycle appears to strong. However, there is always hope.The Great Beast [society, the collective] is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.
It is impossible for me to take myself as an end or, in consequence, my fellow man as an end, since he is my fellow. Nor can I take a material thing, because matter is still less capable of having finality conferred upon it than human beings are.
Only one thing can be taken as an end, for in relation to the human person it possesses a kind of transcendence: this is the collective.
A profound observation. We create our own oppressors as a response to nature who absorb individuality and its unique pursuit of objective human meaning and purpose.In "Sketch of Contemporary Social Life" (1934), Weil develops the theme of collectivism as the trajectory of modern culture.
“Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, and never have men been so less capable, not only of subordinating their actions to their thoughts, but even of thinking.”
Weil is not defending the individual as laisse-faire atom but as subordinated to inimical modern forces by "production and consumption," with science, technology, labor, money, and social life turning historical means into corporate and collectivist ends.
“The inversion of the relation between means and ends -- an inversion which is to a certain extent the law of every oppressive society -- here becomes total or nearly so, and extends to nearly everything.”
Weil then analyzes the relationship bwtween economics and the state, and militarism as an adjunct to extending economic control and social content to the goals of the powerful. Sometimes she uses Marxian or anarchist viewpoints to demonstrate her point; other times she uses them to demonstrate their failure to have anticipated the shrewdness of the capitalist elites and institutions to bypass and overcome the logical obstacles to their version of reality. With the modern spirit has come the systematization of accumulation, organization, and control of the range and relationships of all human activity. Power is concentrated and like a whirlpool absorbs every facet of life. Oppression is inevitably bound to productivity, efficiency, coercion. Productivity and progress, consumption, and limitless expansion of desire and power are all aspects of modern culture. And yet society revolts not against its own oppressors but against nature.
Jesus said: “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” It is still the same. No need to have the experience of objective conscience. Let the collective define it for you. Why bother a person with the question of responsibility?According to Weil, the person's accession to society, the individual's renunciation of values to the collective as defined by a small group, is based on ignorance and fear, fear that without society (which is to say the state), people will collapse into crime and evil. The social and collective is seen as transcending individuals, as a supernatural entity from which nationalism and war is as normal as science, progress, and consumption. All of these evils are taking place simultaneously in a social context. The individual has probably never reflected on these issues at all, never acknowledged his or her degree of complicity in this system. But, say the apologist for the Great Beast, the individual need have no direct responsibility,
“The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice, gold is the social order. In the case of ambition, power is the social order.”
Thus society itself is the Great Beast, not some particular product of society, not even the state, the mode of production, the capitalist class, or any other social product. The weight of humanity is a heavy and ponderous gravity, a force but a contrived force to which the individual remains oblivious.