We know, or seem to know, now, that we have multiple nervous systems, effectively. I got to comparing and contrasting my foggy recall of Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents, which I read many years ago, in what was never quite a Freudian phase–I have always been partial to Jung–but one in which I took his work seriously.
And I got to thinking about his concept of Sublimation. I continue to believe that the fascinating thing about Freud is that he was always right on the verge of something true, but never quite got there. Part of the problem was that he lacked our current knowledge. Part of the problem is that he was never able to return to his quite accurate child molestation thesis of hysteria, for reasons of vanity, cowardice, and careerism.
What if we call Sublimation “contingent dissociation”? From a materialistic perspective, from that of assuming that our bodies “speak”, that all of us are affected in primal and often obscure ways by our genetic heritage, personal experience, and animal responses, this makes perfect sense.
What if we also follow William James and take religious experience at face value, and posit that non-animalistic experiences are also possible, that a sense of the transcendent is not a lie, but an important insight into higher truth?
There is something very useful here. I was thinking about what is needed to herd people into a city. It is contrary to our natural instincts, in my view. Everyone in a city has to suppress–dissociate from–primal impulses. But these impulses do not go away. We retain the urge to hunt and kill. We feel anxiety when we are confined.
And I think of Carthage and Moloch, and the sacrifice of children, thrown into enormous fires. You have huge, highly organized civil orders, and that in the middle of it all. The Aztecs were the same. The Romans often practiced sacrifice, and occasionally even human sacrifice, although mostly it was animals.
And I think most human societies have been based on what I would call animal orders, ones which were able to impose discipline by channeling and controlling animal urges. Those who were what I might call the “Keepers of the Hate” were the priests, and were exalted because of the vital importance of their “work”.
I was thinking, too, that perhaps the most energetic exponents of “Goodness”–like me–are those simultaneously most afflicted with unprocessed anger, hurt, shame, and violence. One can certainly make this case with regard to Christianity, if one studies the ACTUAL history. The genius of Islam, of course, is that it channels those energies outward, into aggressive warfare. Once the wars stopped, decadence quickly set in.
Id, Ego and Superego are all animalistic constructs. There is a fundamental pessimism in Freud, made necessary by his atheism. But what if we posit on the one hand, biology, and on the other spirit, and what makes sense of it all, what directs our attention and thus our actions, our self?
I have been watching “Sin City” over the past couple days, and just finished it, and it is triggering me in interesting and productive ways. It is helping me make contact with my own aggressive energies, and without owning and recognizing those energies, peace is impossible.
I have not reached the point I want to make. Processing will continue. I do think a bridge needs to be built between materialistic science and Spirit. New Age people need to own their rage, and so too do the scientist who want to tear us–themselves–down to nothing but machines.
Progress remains possible. We simply have to figure out how to survive long enough to allow it to happen.