posted on facebook, July 19, 2013

One thing that I find interesting is the old saying, "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing." For a long time when I heard this, I thought it was a reproach (actually I think the first time I heard this phrase was in reference to the Soviet Union, of all things, and their - to the speaker - incoherent foreign policy), usually meaning that a group of people was badly organized. It looks like the "idiom finder" of thefreedictionary.com agrees with this interpretation, since they use, as an example of correct usage, "It was evident that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing when we planned our potluck dinner party, since everyone brought dessert and no one brought a main dish." 
 
But if you go back to the origin of this phrase, it's Jesus speaking, in Matthew, Chapter 6: "...when thou doest alms (works), let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." It's not just okay for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing (in fact, just a couple of verses earlier, Jesus says, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," strongly implying that not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing is an example of this perfection, the perfection of God Himself!) - it's actually an ethical commandment to engage in this kind of "disorganization." Is God, according to Jesus, chaotically disorganized? And should we be, as well?
 
It's clear from the context that Jesus is saying that one should not make a great show of one's good deeds, but that we should rather do them "in secret" (of course this parallels Plato's Republic, Book 2, Sections 361-362, concerning the one who spends his life "seeming to be unjust while being just" and who is eventually "crucified"), and implies that those very organizations that most people regard as the worst and most unjust may actually be the best and most just (organizations stigmatized as "totalitarian," for instance...?). 
 
But there's more to it than that - Jesus actually brings it down from the level of the social and of organization to the personal level. Not only is okay - in fact, better - in fact, perfect - in fact, morally mandatory - for one part of the organization not to know what another part of the organization is doing. It is also morally mandatory for one part of *yourself* not to know what another part of yourself is doing. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." We're dealing here with that level that you get to when you break society down even further than the individual level - what Simon Critchley calls "the dividual."
 
I'm tempted to say more, but it might get zany so I'll stop there.

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