One of the effects of trauma is hypervigilance, which amounts to an instinctual sense that EVERYTHING MATTERS. That sound, that glance, that unreturned phone call, that shadow: they all may signal danger. It would not be wrong to call it a prolonged perceptual spasm.
But you cannot maintain a spasm forever.
In my own case I started reading what I would now term nihilistic literature–that of the Dada movement–in my late teens to try and kill this nagging sense that everything mattered. In my own case, having been raised by outwardly pious and highly judgmental parents, I was afraid to lift a finger to do anything. I could not remain a child, and I could not emerge into adulthood. So I had what amounted to a mild mental breakdown, of the sort common enough among clever people in our conflicted and deeply confused age.
In order to counter the effects of the spasm, I took what amounted to an affective neurotoxin, the idea that NOTHING mattered.
But this of course leads directly to nowhere.
I ought of course logically–the logic of our time being of course highly illogical–to have begun reading socialist comic books (they are all, even Marx, comic books).
But I decided to pursue “spirituality”, which by and large has its own set of comic books, its own confusions masquerading as profundity, its own escapes from reality. Most of the time, in my experience, if someone describes themselves as “spiritual” you should run away. This is regrettable, but largely true. I am often separated from people with whom I ought to share a common label.
Then I discovered, decades later, the clinical uses of alcohol. I have used it to anesthetize my inner child while I try and figure out a way forward. It gets what it needs, and my mature self gets some freedom of action.
My task presently is to merge the two without alcohol, and the only way I can do that is to get the message to my traumatized self that some things matter and some don’t. That alertness is sometimes useful, and sometimes superfluous or even counterproductive.
Deep in meditation yesterday I was speaking to this part, and it fully expected to be killed any day throughout childhood. I assured it that I could guarantee it would make it to at least 46. I can’t make any promises about tomorrow, but it never expected to get this far.
It occurred to me the other day that this blog is a bit of a boundary violation. I overshare, and it comes from an emotionally underdeveloped place. It is likely much or most of this should just go in my written journal. Or, since physically writing slows me down terribly, I could type things up and print them.
But this is still somewhat comforting. It is a type of sharing, even if I am sharing with persons unknown to me, some of whom presumably wish me ill. None of us make it out of this world alive, or unscarred. The deeper the cuts, the deeper the experience. And we choose daily what to do with that experience. Me, I use it as wind, or try to.
The point of this post, though, is I suppose to call Nihilism what it is: intellectualized trauma. I may have said this, but I like to think that when I repeat myself, I do so in slightly different ways. I can’t remember all I write.
And I was thinking yesterday about the movie “Pan’s Labyrinth”, and the cruelty of the fascist father. And I was pondering how the rebels–the Stalin backed Communists–would have had similar people emerge if they had won. As it was, they kept torture chambers, and I’m sure assassinated what enemies they could.
Then I got to thinking that the Fasces itself was an emblem of the Romans, who for their part would at times obliterate cities and even civilizations. They would slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, and raze their buildings. If my math is correct, they killed some 450,000 Carthaginians.
And I read this interesting passage from there:
But you cannot maintain a spasm forever.
In my own case I started reading what I would now term nihilistic literature–that of the Dada movement–in my late teens to try and kill this nagging sense that everything mattered. In my own case, having been raised by outwardly pious and highly judgmental parents, I was afraid to lift a finger to do anything. I could not remain a child, and I could not emerge into adulthood. So I had what amounted to a mild mental breakdown, of the sort common enough among clever people in our conflicted and deeply confused age.
In order to counter the effects of the spasm, I took what amounted to an affective neurotoxin, the idea that NOTHING mattered.
But this of course leads directly to nowhere.
I ought of course logically–the logic of our time being of course highly illogical–to have begun reading socialist comic books (they are all, even Marx, comic books).
But I decided to pursue “spirituality”, which by and large has its own set of comic books, its own confusions masquerading as profundity, its own escapes from reality. Most of the time, in my experience, if someone describes themselves as “spiritual” you should run away. This is regrettable, but largely true. I am often separated from people with whom I ought to share a common label.
Then I discovered, decades later, the clinical uses of alcohol. I have used it to anesthetize my inner child while I try and figure out a way forward. It gets what it needs, and my mature self gets some freedom of action.
My task presently is to merge the two without alcohol, and the only way I can do that is to get the message to my traumatized self that some things matter and some don’t. That alertness is sometimes useful, and sometimes superfluous or even counterproductive.
Deep in meditation yesterday I was speaking to this part, and it fully expected to be killed any day throughout childhood. I assured it that I could guarantee it would make it to at least 46. I can’t make any promises about tomorrow, but it never expected to get this far.
It occurred to me the other day that this blog is a bit of a boundary violation. I overshare, and it comes from an emotionally underdeveloped place. It is likely much or most of this should just go in my written journal. Or, since physically writing slows me down terribly, I could type things up and print them.
But this is still somewhat comforting. It is a type of sharing, even if I am sharing with persons unknown to me, some of whom presumably wish me ill. None of us make it out of this world alive, or unscarred. The deeper the cuts, the deeper the experience. And we choose daily what to do with that experience. Me, I use it as wind, or try to.
The point of this post, though, is I suppose to call Nihilism what it is: intellectualized trauma. I may have said this, but I like to think that when I repeat myself, I do so in slightly different ways. I can’t remember all I write.
And I was thinking yesterday about the movie “Pan’s Labyrinth”, and the cruelty of the fascist father. And I was pondering how the rebels–the Stalin backed Communists–would have had similar people emerge if they had won. As it was, they kept torture chambers, and I’m sure assassinated what enemies they could.
Then I got to thinking that the Fasces itself was an emblem of the Romans, who for their part would at times obliterate cities and even civilizations. They would slaughter hundreds of thousands of people, and raze their buildings. If my math is correct, they killed some 450,000 Carthaginians.
And I read this interesting passage from there:
Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said:
-
-
- A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish,
- And Priam and his people shall be slain.
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And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human.
And I ponder that Communism and Fascism, far from being modern phenomena, are ancient. There has always been some pretext for rapine. There has always been trauma, horror, and I think trauma has been often practiced and repeated virtually intentionally, as a means of compelling obedience, and because to do otherwise would bring to the conscious awareness of the parent the arbitrariness and damaging nature of their own childhoods.
Is the craven intellectual decadence of our modern universities without precedent? Of course not. Many civilizations have experienced decline and fall.
What might be unique is the sum total of possible knowledge open to us. Yes, that is unique. That makes the insufferable stupidity on display all the more blatant, since everything they could need made available to them to reach intelligent and defensible conclusions is there.
But trauma. By and large people who go into academia are by inclination people who “live in their heads”, which itself means almost by definition that they have unprocessed emotions their work enables them to avoid.
So we have a system which more or less directly selects the least emotionally intelligent people in our civilization and grants them the privilege of inculcating within our young a culture they have almost consciously separated themselves from. Small wonder imbecility has been growing for a half century or more.
And I think, too, that with America we have created the first truly Liberal, large, relevant nation in the world’s history. We have our civil protections, our Constitution, our Republic as reference points. We have created something meaningfully good, which is nonetheless being rejected by people who, if they possessed an ounce of soul and sense, would cherish it, while still trying to perfect it in a conscious and responsible manner. The sheer unnecessaryness of all the loss which is planned by our thought elites is infuriating.
Still, I think courage is its own reward. There is an intrinsic pleasure in defiance.
That will do for now. I am likely displacing. That is my new word for when I find myself writing when I should be doing. This needed saying, though, and I’m glad I said it.
Have a good day, anonymous reader!!!!