Month: April 2017

Anxiety is a quintessentially social emotion.  When you look at a school of fish or birds in a swarm that turns on a dime, whatever it is that does that is an analogue for anxiety.  Anxiety tells us, in a social context, when we are out of tune or out of step–or it prevents this from happening in the first place. It is a way of orienting oneself within a social world.  You instinctively avoid what makes you feel anxious, although of course your frontal cortex can override what your gut is telling you.

As I said the other day, the culture where an individual belongs is one where he or she is self similar to the macro, and the macro is an expression of who and what they believe.  There is an up and down motion.  There is change, of course, and decisions that need to be made, but all within a known range, using known principles, ideas, traditions, and prejudices.

The tragedy of our contemporary age–and people often speak of this world as in decline, as if we were not perfectly free to make of the world what we want, and thus free to build something better–is that “culture” per se has in fact changed to the point where most of what we have in common is movies, TV shows, and if we are lucky a religious community.  It is very shallow.  Very little can be assumed.

It is not common to talk about views of death, and differing views of death are not considered sufficient reason to form a negative opinion of someone, in what are supposed to be conditions of universal tolerance.  Simply because one of is an atheist, and the rest of us are functional agnostics, that matters not at all.  It’s a quirk.  What used to be matters of life and death have been reduced to individual ideosyncrasies.

I am of course in part channeling Bloom here.

But what I would submit is that what I would argue is an intermediate period between global conflict and global peace–at least potentially–is characterized by a great difficulty in calming that anxiety which oriented people traditionally in cultures where they were embedded, nested.

This anxiety–this social need, and the biological imperative as an animal to reduce chronic tension–is an important factor in the splintering of our society along countless lines, into immoderate and largely intolerant pseudo-communities.  To question that community is to risk bringing back the worry, or what amounts to a disease of self, which belongs nowhere, to no one, to no purpose.

So much of life is just hanging on, just continuing to move in the hope of insight, or revelation.  Our world is miraculous–it does speak to us–but far too few of us listen.

I continue to view with trepidation and no small amount of horror how eagerly so many people want to become Dr. Frankensteins and create mechanical monsters which will one day have the capacity to kill us all.  This is not creativity: this is purging.  It is driven by fear, by dissociation, by confusion, and by power lust. 

I was in a bar last night trying to remember the Johnny Depp movie where he played Whitey Bulgher (or however you spell it) and I was saying “Devil’s picnic?”  “Devils Dinner”?

The name of course is Black Mass.  But it his me this morning that in some respects my unconscious was telling me an important truth. Is not the height of a traditional Catholic Mass the offering and consuming of the Eucharist?  Is this not where Jesus is symbolically cannibalized?  It is where the spirit of God becomes material, and is ingested by the faithful for their purification and improvement.  Jesus died willingly–this is pointed out in the Mass–and was innocent.  But he is often compared to a lamb, and lambs at that time were sacrificed and eaten.

Logically, a black mass would include the consuming of a victim which did not give its life willingly.

And both could be said to have aspects of feasts to them.  Food is a vitally important part of lives.  As I have said, arguably the digestive “drive” is more important than the sexual one, although of course both can be and often are combined.

What soothes the wild beast within us is one question.  How do we tame it?

But the second question, and the reason there are two masses, is “how can I use the animal within me to feel more alive?”

Neither mass is quite satisfactory from an individual pursuing optimal mental, emotional, and physical health.  We do not want to be animals or pretend to be angels.  We do need food, after all, and killing is a necessary element of that even for vegetarians.  The only alternative is the logical one of the Jains who fast themselves to death.

I am meandering a bit, but perhaps there is something useful here, for you, or for a future me.

My work, of course, continues.  I found the other day that I could contact conflicting elements within myself–effective solutions to real problems at different times which have outlived their usefulness–and hold them in a shared space.  I did not try to reconcile them: they must do this organically.  Intrapsychic force never works.

Perhaps I could stipulate a principle: the coming together of the components of psychic conflicts can be allowed, but never compelled.  Not, in any event, if true organic integration is the goal.  Again: there is a self similarity between this fact, and social integration, which also cannot be compelled, if the goal is true integration.  We tried to compel it: it didn’t work.  And what progress has been made has been made in spite of the spokespeople for integration and “progress” of all sorts, not because of them.  When they understand one another, people tend to get along.  It is that simple.  And the same process applies intrapsychically, in that you in effect have to “introduce” disparate elements to one another.

I was talking to a guy last night in a bar who is a hard charger one minute, and a nervous wreck the other.  When he is a hard charger, he is putting important elements of his emotional self on hold, suppressing them.  But you cannot suppress things forever, or at least not without considerable cost.  Most alcoholics and drug abusers fit this profile.  “Functional” alcoholics, like me, fit this profile, although in my own case I see the problem and work daily–nearly continuously–to solve it.  This idea here, for example, is new to me.

I had some interesting dreams last night, that brought some ideas to mind, which I wanted to share.

Looking at my mother, she never loved me, because she does not know how, but she loved the reflection of herself she saw in me.  I am her.  I am a part of her.

And I started looking more deeply at what is called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I feel it really ought to be recategorized as a form of Developmental Trauma.  In fact, I would agree with Bessel van der Kolk that much of the DSM should be restructured to reflect the pervasive effects in later life of very similar traumas that happen early in life.  Depression, anxiety, phobias, compulsions: all have the same roots, and it is stupid–and in the case of the psychiatrists who receive so much remuneration from their moral equivalents in the pharmaceutical industry–venal to pretend otherwise.

Narcissists lack the mirroring necessary to develop a core sense of self, so they seek to force mirroring on the world.  They force the world to look at them, to pay attention to them.  Their every moment is a struggle between psychological disintegration, and revivification through being seen.  Everywhere they look they want reconfirmation that they exist and are recognized.  This is a continuation of a basic process which every infant goes through, where they look to the world, and ask it to see it, to recognize them as human beings, to recognize their needs.  But in a narcissist this world exists at such a primitive level that they cannot get to the root feelings, which are horror and complete confusion, to the point where psychotic breakdown is perhaps a real possibility in some of them.  This is why it is so hard to treat.

In effect, you have psychological infants out in the world, continually consuming what some theorists call “Narcissistic Supply”, because they need it like vampires–who are perhaps one mythic emanation of this basic dynamic–need blood.  They need the life of others, their attention, their generosity, their openness, their giving.

I have to be honest: I don’t know why I am still alive, other than that I seem to have been born with an enormous capacity for endurance and suffering.  The last therapist I saw was asking me where I got emotional support in my childhood from, and it was a very short list.  It amounted to, “well, I had a dog, and there were a couple teachers who were nice to me, and my grandfather who I saw once a year I always liked.”

But all this is also extraordinarily interesting.  It is like a gave myself, in planning my life, a scavenger hunt, and intentionally hid some of the prizes in the deepest darkest places so I knew I would have to go there, would have to do deep introspection as a condition of survival.

I am gradually integrating.  In some respects the only fact that matters is that I DID survive, and did so with the capacity for internal focus.  I am gradually learning how to learn.  This is by far the toughest task any of us undertake.

Given that the Constitution declares that Congress shall have the power to declare war, I have been wondering what options Trump might have in dealing with North Korea.  To some extent, the original Korean War never ended; this is why we have stationed troops there for over 60 years.

Obviously, it would seem stupid to put declaring war to a vote publicly in Congress, since North Korea would then likely launch a nuclear strike against at least South Korea. They have no hope of winning a war, of course, but they very much have the power to create a lot of pointless destruction, which is to say, to export what they produce internally as a matter of long term policy.

I had wondered if Trump could call each Congressperson and record their response as a de facto vote for war, so that he could prove he had “Congressional Authorization” without putting the whole thing to a public debate.  For that exercise, he would only need to involve enough people to get a majority.  Obviously, we have many traitors in Congress who have never met an American enemy or tyrant of their sort they didn’t like, so leaks would be inevitable if too many people were involved.

But inviting the Senate to the White House?  Perhaps this is brilliance.  He could get a vote taken there, and claim that he upheld the Constitution while also making sure there were not leaks which would get people killed.  Hell, he could order the attack before they left the building.  The Senate is not the entire Congress, but it is by general legal and historic consensus the most important legislative body in the country.  The House was to be the home of rabble-rousers and lunatics like Maxine Waters.  She belongs there.  But the Senate, which in its name implies age, experience, and wisdom, was to be the most consequential body.

We have no obvious good options with North Korea.  Kim Jung Un is young, bellicose, utterly convinced by the sycophants around him that he is invincible, and apparently fully dedicated to building nuclear missiles which can deliver the nuclear warheads he keeps threatening surrounding nations–most recently Australia–with.

I have proposed building a Disneyland or whores paradise, or Shangri-La or whatever floats his boat, but it seems likely he is a grandiose sociopath who is utterly convinced of his military superiority.  I have proposed inviting some of his commanders to see the full array of weaponry arrayed against them.  He obviously could decline this offer, and our own commanders, for understandable reasons, could refuse to cooperate, or at least strongly advise against it.

The core truth about North Korea, though, is that every indication is that at some point he likely will launch a nuclear weapon at an innocent nation, and perhaps do so with no warning or provocation.  This is the height of recklessness, but a clear and very present danger to the United States, Japan, and many other nations.

I will do a post soon on some thoughts on the notion and cultural history of the notion of bourgeois, but I want to offer s brief comment from s strip mall somewhere in America.

Many women have one identity with make-up and another without. And this identity can be mutable.

Humans, like all animals, are naturally relaxed when not in immediate danger.  But because there is no limit to the potential dangers we can create in our minds–or which our minds create in the face of the active resistance of some other part of our selves–continuous tension is not just possible, but in modern society almost ubiquitous.

Tensions arise from present fears and worries, from psychological conflicts, and as the residue of a systemic charge created in trauma which has never been denuded through awareness of its on-going potency.

And most of what most people strive for, every day, is the reduction of tension. In important respects, this is the ACTUAL intention behind nearly everything everyone does.  Obviously, people conform even when they would otherwise be disinclined to do so because of the fear of being rejected, which is painful, which is to say, creates emotional tension, which we process as painful.

But even serial killers, pedophiles, and monsters of other sorts ALSO seek to reduce tension.  It is simply the case that their particular maladies are so severe that only extremely anti-social means will allow to actually accomplish their goal.  I think of the killer in “The Lovely Bones” relaxing in his bathtub.  The tension he lived with daily, of the pain he could not see much less process, of the fear of being caught he was very much aware of, was gone for a brief moment.  That is why he did it.  The anger and rage had to be put out into the world and someone or something had to die.

I have said this before, but if we make this very obvious–but rarely made (actually, I don’t think I am copying anyone, as I have not seen this claim made elsewhere that I can recall)–observation that tension and the means to reduce it fuel nearly everything everyone does, we can readily affirm that learning to reduce tension is a principle purpose in living. So much of what drives us would not drive us, would not be necessary, if we could simply DIRECTLY address the tension fueling our manias and ambitions.

And I suppose I could mention sex, but is sexual tension really the main one?  It does not seem so to me.  I felt sexual tension earlier today, but I made it go away.  This is not the root of the problem.  If it were Mick Jagger would have been the picture of mental health.  Sex is a part of tension overall, sometimes admittedly an important one, often a secondary or even absent one.

But what philosophers talk about the existential importance of physical and emotional tension, and the logically following importance of learning to release them?  None that I know of, although I am hardly a serious student of philosophy (although I’m also not ignorant, having read a lot of books, and listened to a lot of lectures).  Picture Sartre, sitting at his coffee table, high on meth, chain smoking, drinking glass after glass of wine, writing 10-15 pages or more across much of a fairly long life.  What if he had learned to enjoy the simple pleasures of pleasant days, the songs of birds, and the joy of being?  What if he were that exquisitely happy man in the corner, friend to the world?

I have felt nauseated by the world.  I can get this sentiment.  But I did not see any need to attach ontological status to it.  I knew it was not “life”.  It was the relic of a disease I did not choose, and have long sought to tame and master.

Go sideways.  None of us live in true hierarchies.  We live in a giant cloud, where relationships and directions are what matter.

If we stipulate, as appears scientifically well grounded, that the mind by nature seeks to create order, then we can define culture as the Emergent Property of this effort, with regard to the following domains:

The creation of meaning, purpose, and human connection, all of which are biological needs.

The formation of clear ideas about what is true, and methods for determining it.

The proper way for people to relate to one another, from the family to the entire planet.

The proper means of ensuring physical survival, comfort, and perhaps even prosperity.

Cultures are in a constant process of formation, destruction, and alteration, and we all of necessity live within them, and are shaped by them.

The Self, society and culture are all self similar.  This does not mean, obviously, that a person from one culture can be fit within another, but that we all exist within cultures, and it cannot be otherwise.

What is absent in the modern era is compulsion to FORCE people to adopt specific behaviors which we also used to call culture.  In America, arranged marriage is uncommon, but very common in India.  Young men and women both have to accept it to remain a part of their native culture. If they do not, the link of self similarity is broken, but since cultures evolve continuously, the meaning and extent of this break can evolve continually, as perhaps new understandings are created.

The desire to avoid violence and war is also a cultural attribute, one of modern Liberal culture.  It is not a rejection of culture per se.

Cultures cannot be created.  This is the core error of Rouseau in his concept of Legislator, and the countless gallons of blood which people attempting to enact his ideas have spilled uselessly.

Cultures–like a bacteria culture–can be planted and watered and fed, and may or may not take root.  But they have a fundamentall chthonic character.  When deep, they arise from unconscious roots.

We are all continuous cocreators both of our sense of self, and of our culture.  Every wink, nod, shaking of the head, widening of the eyes, choice of words, participation or boycott, every social decision we make, has an effect on this thing which is not a thing, but which is also not not a thing.

The skeleton of a culture, what holds it together, is ideas.  This is true even if it is a tribal or traditional culture based on ancestral stories.  There is still the idea that these stories are true and relevant, and that the ritual activities associated with them are important.

Our culture currently rests on bad ideas.  The formation of meaning in important respects is inseparable from the formation of truth concepts, and it is difficult to overstate the importance of the notion of materialism, that we are machines made of meat, destined to be hurled into blackness after a short period of pointless activity and in many cases no small amount of emotional and physical pain.

The idea of materialism–now apparently called Physicalism–matters.  It matters a great deal.

Cultures, like selves, change over time, and like a rain shower are never replicated even day to day in exactly the same way.

An idea I would like to stipulate is that we can work slowly and gradualistically to shape our own culture, both by internalizing notions of the possibility and desireability and path to personal spiritual growth, and the idea that we are immortal beings, which is what the best, most honest science indicates.

It is logical to seek endless distraction from an endless void one cannot escape.  But it is not logical to ignore paths forward to greater happiness, physical well-being, and social harmony and connection.

A continuum can be drawn between a very specific cultural type where all details of life are more or less choreographed in full–let us say among traditional Vedic Indians–and a condition in which the physical body is COMPLETELY relaxed.  All of us are the same in relaxation.  Our cultures arise, I think I can argue, from our thoughts, and our tensions, which are related.  What thoughts make you tense?  This will vary from culture to culture.  What should one pay attention to?  This varies culture to culture.

But body awareness, human biology when healthy, is the same everywhere.  There is no language when there are no thoughts, and without language–including imagistic language, which is to say the pictures in our heads–there is no difference among humans.  We are all the same.  We can call this nature.

Rousseau apparently used to do a primitive form of Kum Nye by lying on a raft on a lake and just feeling his being.  Would that he had known about Kum Nye.  Perhaps we might have avoided the 100 million or more deaths in the 20th Century that attended the efforts to legislate and change human nature.

The one thing Allan Bloom makes very clear is that bad ideas produce shitty cultures, and that the idea that there are no shitty cultures is an example of a bad idea.  Well, he perhaps did not quite say that–he is keeping a very high level and honestly professorial attitude–but that is what I in any event will say.

And I would say that the point of culture is for all of us to become gods ourselves.  We all have sparks of the Divine in us, and our job in this life is to fan those sparks into flames, and become as self similar to the Creator as humanly possible. Our political path is to meet Madison’s criteria for ending governments: making of all men and women angels.

I continue to listen to Bloom, and am really enjoying his lucidity and willingness to use clear language to express clear ideas, but I would object to what I understand him to be saying, which is that the American project, in its reliance on a theoretical and abstract individualism, is inherently monadic, which is to say atomizing and reducable in the end to economic values.

America was founded as a nation where private pieties, in the plural, could be shared openly.  It was founded as a place where thousands of churches could form congregations and masses of the faithful which worshipped God as they saw fit, and where they pursued their own understanding of virtue.  It was to be a place of countless small communities which tamed the wild beast without caging him.

This notion of the bourgeois keeps coming up over and over in his treatment of European thought, and I am going to need to put some thought to it.  Since I am listening to this, I also may need to read some of the passages several times, since his summations are extraordinarily useful, but warrant close reading and likely rereading.

But I would stipulate that from my own perspective I have not seen Chaos/Complexity Theory incorporated into the fields of morality and philosophy, and that this addition in my view helps solve many of the tensions and polarities.  With concepts like Emergent Properties, one can speak of things both existing and not existing, and not solely as a feature of language.  In my perhaps overly limited understanding, it seems to enable the solution of important problems, a project which seems, again in my view, to have been abandoned much too prematurely.

It would perhaps be more true to say not so much that the project was abandoned, as the incompetents operating the system painted themselves into a corner, and have been justifying their folly theoretically since.

And I would stipulate as a general rule as well that reason can help us get what we want, but cannot tell us what we DO want.

Axiom: If it has to do with machines, consult science; if it has to do with humans, your heart.

Definition: machine: any fixed or definable complex system which exhibits regularities in nature such that general principles can be stipulated, as well as the creations of the human mind expressed within the field of matter intended to be of practical use.

Not sure if I agree with all that, but I am tired so it will have to do.

It came to me today that a good life is continually throwing off sparks: sparks of happiness, of creative insight, of originality of mood and behavior.

And I was sitting, contemplating loneliness and its alternative, emotional satiety, and it hit me that a happy spirit, one who has contacted the roots of life, is like a fountain, continually flowing outward in all directions.

The opposite of this is someone who is always leaning, leaning on people, on ideas, on distractions, on jokes, on drugs, on alcohol, on cruelty, on work, on a fixed identity which is absolutely rigid.

People who need each other can never see each other as they are.  There is no distance possible when both are leaning into each other for support.  Someone who says to another “I can’t imagine life without you” is, perhaps, really saying “I will never fully understand you.”

I have flickers of really interesting emotions cross my field of awareness sometimes, and I had a lot of them today.  It’s becoming a better and better thing to be me.  God knows its been pretty shitty for a very long time.