American nationalism has all of the excitement of a high school civics lecture. The problem is, American nationalism is always too distant from the heart. It is always reflecting on what the American *State* has accomplished, perhaps because that is one of the few things that truly unites Americans--we are all subjects (and beneficiaries) of the American State. We can all relate to that. But the result is a type of civic, bureaucratic nationalism that would be fitting for the Roman Empire in its last days of decadence.
American nationalism is always reflecting on either the greatness of the American State, or on how the contributions of miniscule, ordinary Americans have made the American State strong. One does not feel heroic when one serves the American State. One feels like a tiny, miserable mercenary, serving a huge, distant, bureaucratic, elitist multi-ethnic empire like Austria-Hungary.
Amercian nationalism entirely lacks the Blood-and-Soil folkish heroism of German nationalism.
American nationalism also cannot match up to the revolutionary, universalist, radical utopian heroism of French nationalism. Sure, we make some feeble attempts with a few "We the People" phrases scattered in our national tradition, but the minute you start singing, "Aux armes citoyens!" you are bound to get some petulant lecture about "the dangers of mob rule" and how "we are a republic and not a democracy, you know!"
The nationalist fairy tales that we are taught in elementary school might be good enough for a 3rd-grader, but they are hardly anything suitable for an adult to sink his or her teeth into.
At its very best, American nationalism is like the loyalty one feels to a company that provides dental insurance and free child care.
Napoleon summed up the problem most clearly:
"A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him."
But half-pences and petty distinctions are all that American society currently offers its citizens. And that's exactly why American national feeling rightfully languishes in the pathetic state that it does.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Salvia Divinorum meets Plato, Kant, Freud, and Bach
What follows is an account of the most intense, revelatory experience of my entire life, an experience that I don't think I will ever want to repeat again in my life, but which I'm glad I did have. And, besides that, I believe it might be of some philosophical and psychological import.
The sparknotes summary: Freud was completely right, Kant and Plato were completely wrong, and Bach's harpsichord solo from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 was waaaay too overwhelming to have playing during a Salvia experience. Or perhaps it was just right. It was not an unpleasant experience, just bat-shit-insane extreme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxzY3tFTz9k
That's what I chose to have playing. I had a feeling that the absolute mathematical perfection and periodicity of the piece, its chord progressions, etc., would be perfect for comfortably structuring the experience. I thought that it would be better to have something that is totally predictable and that comfortably fills up the room with a warm sound, than to risk having random noise interruptions come into play. To a certain extent, I think I was prudent in this respect, although the part about 1:54 into the piece, where he's going down the scales and doing that sort of electric guitar solo sort of thing, that was waaaay overwhelming, and literally impacted me physically as a sort of waterfall washing over me.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the background:
Salvia is an entheogenic dissociative hallucinogen, traditionally used by the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca for generations, and just recently discovered by Western science and Western drug culture. For more background on Salvia, watch this documentary:
Sacred Weeds:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4829797616419921428
Fortunately, Salvia is not regulated (Yet) under Federal law, nor (yet) under Massachusetts law. (I say "yet" because, like I said, this drug is relatively new to Western culture, and lately states have been rushing to make it illegal. It has already been made illegal in Missouri, for example. Now, in my opinion, that's completely unnecessary, and probably counter-productive. This substance is not addictive (trust me, there's no way in hell this thing could be addictive), you are as harmless as a puppy to others while you are on it (usually completely immobilized, and if mobile at all, then completely uncoordinated (if not totally unaware of your surroundings) and only a potential harm to yourself if there happen to be things like open flames or sharp objects that you could bumble into (which is a reason why it's advisable to have a sitter with you). Additionally, Salvia only lasts 5-10 minutes, it is non-toxic, it has no known side effects, aside from a potential for some minor headaches afterwards and sweating during the experience, and there are no known adverse long-term effects. Anyways, because it is currently legal in Massachusetts, that's why I feel perfectly comfortable discussing this on facebook and elsewhere. The free exchange of information and experiences is an important reason for keeping it legal, if nothing else. At least people will be able to educate themselves about it before they do it.
News reports suggesting that people "get impaired judgment" on this stuff or that people would be a "danger on the road" are laughable. If you take a reasonable dose, you will have NO judgments at all and NO ability to physically do anything, much less even attempt to drive a car. I'm sure some idiot somewhere at some point will take a mild dose and then try to drive a car and kill someone, but there are thousands of idiots who abuse alcohol and get themselves and others killed. We can't make the whole world idiot-proof, and there will always be idiots, so we just need to deal with them as they come along. Obviously, driving on Salvia should be illegal, I don't think anyone would dispute that. And maybe you would want to regulate Salvia so that there is an age requirement for buying it, because you really do need to be an informed adult to mess with this stuff. But should it be made totally illegal? No, of course not.
Now, given that it's currently legal and has no major side effects, why would I not want to take it ever again? Because one "breakthrough" is more than enough, oh boy. The experience was so goddamn intense, the thought of doing it again just seems inconceivable right now.
Last night was actually my second time doing it, but the first time I did it, I didn't do as much (only half a bowl of 10x extract) or inhale as well, and I got a much milder effect. That time, I was listening to Bach's "Air" from Suite No. 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyLo9-Voy5s
Naturally, that was also bound to facilitate a gentler experience. Basically, that time, I never lost my ego or my grounding in reality. I felt a little dreamy, like an elusive "something" was happening, but I maintained a consistent train of consciousness throughout. There were no "discontinuous functions" of existence, if you will, just gentle, sloping functions. When I would open my eyes, everything continued to look as before, although there was a moment where there seemed to be a clear, viscous, rotating fluid filling the room, barely perceptible to my vision, like dissolved sugar in water. The one other notable moment in that 5-minute experience was one where I got a distinct emotional feeling of tender, innocent, and eager, quasi-erotic puppy love well up in me for a brief moment--the sort of feeling I had at first with my very first girlfriend, and that I've never quite felt since. I remember gently biting my lip at this point, sort of like when you are aroused during a sexual act. It was a rewarding, wholesome moment, a revisitation of something I now realize I've lost to a certain extent, and something that I would like to rediscover, if at all possible. After that, there was a point where another friend walked in (there were already 3 friends trip-sitting for me in the room. We were all taking turns). I remember hearing his steps in the hallway and it seeming like the steps were echoing in some reaaaaally reaaaaaally long cavern. When he walked in, I opened my eyes and mumbled to him with a grin, "Howdy thar" and I sort of gestured to him with a sort of salute, and at that moment I was overcome with giggles galore. The juxtaposition of the baroque music, all my friends sitting there in a college dorm room, and my "howdy thar" all seemed so incredibly ridiculous. So I pretty much gleefully giggled for the rest of the time, for half a minute or so, until I had more or less come out of it. I came away feeling that it was a very worthwhile experience. Not exactly "pleasurable," but it upwelled some wholesome emotions in me and gave me some reflections on that puppy-love feeling that I've been missing in life.
This second time was, I guess, "worthwhile" too, but in a totally different way. Again, none of it was "pleasant" or "unpleasant" in a sensory sort of way. It was just incredibly shocking.
I went into this second time thinking that it would be a bit like the first. I didn't really have a strong desire to do it again, but I was curious to see what would happen this time, and we had a little bit left, so we figured we might as well use up the rest of it (this time, I had 2 friends with me, trip-sitting and waiting to go for their turn).
I did about 3/4 of a bowl of the same 10x extract. It was nothing like the first. Well, I was also listening to a more energetic Bach piece, and I was a little keyed-up, but tired, after having had a busy week, so maybe that influenced it.
Here's the narrative:
I take two hits on the pipe. I could already feel some of the first effects during my second hit. My friends start the music. I lay down, close my eyes. A period of time elapses that seems vague, lacking in substance, and long, like when you go to sleep, wake up, but can't remember dreaming anything, but yet at the same time, not like those times where you just blink and wake back up again. You have a vague awareness that some time has passed, but that is all. In this case, even though it felt long, I have been able to ascertain (from reconstructing the timeline from my memory of the later parts of the song playing--and the song was only a little over 3 minute long) that this part must have been like only 10 seconds. Then...
Next thing "I" can remember, "I" am trying to climb up and upon the floor and the music, which are both physically integrated as a sort of big wheel. But not only am I hallucinating--I am hallucinating not even as "myself" who understands what a hallucination is.
I say "I" or "myself" in quotation marks because I had no concept of "I" at this point. I had heard of people talk about this sort of state before, of being separated from the ego, and I used to think, "Ah, that's bullshit, how would that even work? The ego is, like, fundamental to existence. They've got to be imagining all of this stuff." I never really believed in Freudian psychology...until now.
My consciousness was a complete blank-slate. Everything I had known and experienced from my entire life before that was gone, and I was totally lacking in any awareness of that absence in the first place. That moment felt like the beginning of my entire existence, and yet I had no concept of a beginning of an existence at the time. All of this I'm telling you know is from my re-realizations that occurred to me after I had reached the 2nd plane of consciousness and was looking back on my immediate past from the 1st plane of consciousness. What do I mean by "planes of consciousness"?
*1st plane of consciousness: I am an id without an ego or a superego. I have no self-reflection, no Vernunft (Reason), no Wille (Will), no awareness that "I" am an id, no awareness of what an "I", an "id", or an "ego" would be. I don't have a concept of culminative feelings, such as pleasure or pain. All I have is "Drive." Trieb (to use the Freudian term in the original German). All "I" had was aversion or attraction to acting on stimuli, with no awareness that this wheel that I am trying to climb constitutes a "stimuli" or that I have a "Trieb" that I am responding to in the first place. I had no idea why I was trying to climb the wheel, nor any concept of why I would need to have a reason to climb the wheel, nor any idea of what constituted a "wheel," or "climbing" or cause-and-effect, or something as "space-like" or "time-like" or anything. I try to climb the wheel, not because I anticipate renewed pleasure from doing so, nor because I am aware of a drive to do so, but just because that drive is there, driving me (of course, nor do I have any concept of "it", as a foreign force, driving "me." It's not foreign, it's just all there is, and I'm not even aware of it at this point. And besides, although I had perfectly vivid and precise sensory information coming at me (in other words, even though I had no categories of reason to structure it, the "world" as I knew it was still there as clear as ever), I would have been incapable of picking out this Trieb as something distinct from any other stimulus. All there was was the totality of stimuli, without any essential or categorical markers. Only after later reflection could I distinguish, for example, one aspect of the total stimulus as a "wheel" with essential wheel-like characteristics. I consider this to be a resounding rebuttal to Plato's idea of the "ideal forms" as fundamental to existence. Au contraire, my friend, apparently there can conceivably be existence outside of ideal forms. The material world is fundamental, and we manufacture ideal forms to summarize all of this stimulus so as to figure out a short-hand for how the world's cause-and effect-works so that we can react to it.
At this point, as far as I could tell, this was the only existence that "I" had ever experienced (but I wasn't even able to self-reflect on it, nor was I aware of a lack of ability to do so). I now imagine that this is what it feels like to be a lizard, an ant, or a lobotomized human.
The first searing burst of revelation came after getting myself over one of the nodes of the wheel (the wheel had nodes like a paddle wheel (the paddles are the nodes) or a ferris wheel (the passenger cars are the nodes). As I came up over the node, an entire new filter of existence opened up before me. Suddenly all of the shapes "slid" into their ideal forms. I recognized the wheel as a wheel. And I recognized myself as an "I". This burst of revelation was like being a devoted Catholic all your life, and suddenly learning without a doubt that God doesn't exist. It was like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDgXQPxzY8E
Now began the most interesting portion of my experience, the 2nd level of consciousness, me as an ego and with reason, but still without my life history. I began to reflect on my experiences that I just had during my 1st level of consciousness as one would reflect on an eternity of existence (at this time, my 1st and 2nd level existences were all that I knew). I had perfect, vivid memory of this 1st level time (and even now, I fortunately still have fairly vivid memory of the whole thing, even the earliest pre-ego stage, but I am writing this down now the day after, partly in order to also get this recorded, lest details slip away from me). I also began to reflect on my current existence around me, the wheel of the floor and the music spinning, which was still the center of my attention, and which I was still trying to climb, but now I found pleasure in it, and a desire to do more of it, and it became a rewarding sort of game to be doing it. At this point, I thought nothing strange of the fact that the music was physically integrated with the floor and that I was climbing on it. Also, time would often seem to slow down or speed up depending on how fast the wheel was turning, as if those two things were mechanically connected as well. And when I would ponder my immediately preceding pre-ego existence, it was as if I could really time-travel and relive those moments again momentarily, but this time as my 2nd-level self with my 2nd-level self-reflection (I still had no concept of "levels," per se, just that the previous segment of existence was very very strange). Also, I had no idea that anything was particularly strange about this reality around me, with me climbing on the music and doing momentary time-travel and whatnot. This seemed perfectly normal, just how the world worked. I guess I had no a priori ideas or structures to suggest otherwise. This does not seem to support Kant's case for a priori structures for perceiving existence, am I right?
After a few moments of this, I rounded another node on the wheel and got my 2nd and most shocking searing burst of re-realization: an awareness of my entire life history flooded back to me, I realized that there was existence that preceded the 1st level, that I was myself, a college student, and that I had just smoked some Salvia. I saw myself climbing a wheel of floor and music in my friend's dorm room, and realized two things:
1. The world does not actually work like this. I'm tripping balls.
2. I *should* (now with more of the superego tinge of meaning) not be up out of the bed, trying to climb imaginary things, or else I'm going to freak my friends out and look like a psycho. (So, yeah, this is also, apparently, when my superego came flooding back, the most brutal re-realization of them all. Before that, I didn't have any thoughts of "should" or "should not").
So this is when I started to freak out and desperately yearn for the experience to be over. At this point, I'm hallucinating, and I know that I'm hallucinating. I guess that's worse than hallucinating, but being totally unaware, like being totally in the Matrix, vs. being re-introduced to the Matrix.
This is also the point when the Bach harpsichord solo got to the part with the fast descending scales at about 1:55 seconds in. The music now looked and felt like a pillar of water shooting out of my friend's computer, over the wheel, and splashing down from the wheel and drenching me. It was overwhelming and scary, but at the same time I felt elated, kind of like the first time I had an ejaculation. That feeling that your whole body is going into an electrical spasm, and for a split second you think it's too much and that you're not going to be able to withstand it, but also at the same time you like it and feel charged by it. So at this point, I start laughing (both in reality, and in my mental world), and in the real world I try to get up from the bed and reach towards the computer (in reality I had simply been laying there the whole time), and in my mental world I jump from the wheel and run to hug/wrestle with the pillar of music/water. That seemed to relieve some tension. I also at this time realized that it was Bach's harpsichord solo from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 that I was listening to, and that I had selected it, and I was thinking to myself "This is way too overwhelming, I should have picked something else...I just need to hold on a little longer, it's almost going to be over." Apparently my friends directed me back onto the bed at this point, and were laughing along with me (I was laughing, and I even kinda remember laughing, even though I felt half-terrified inside. At the time it felt like a release of tension, of the sense of everything being so overwhelming, and a recognition that "I'm not in control yet, I just have to lay back and take it easy and ride it out.) In my mind, I see my friends again, and I think that I am trying to excuse my behavior (my trying to scale the imaginary wheel) and reassure them that I'm okay. Things start to seem real again. I stop paying attention to the wheel and the water, and when I glance back, they are no longer there. The music no longer produces a physical sensation, but just sounds like music again.
Suddenly I had the 3rd burst of revelation (going to the 4th and final plane of existence, real reality), and this one felt like waking up from a dream within a dream. (Like, the previous coming back to reality had been not entirely real, like how when you wake up in a dream, and then wake up again and realize that you had just woken up into another dream). I had some minor doubts that *this* was finally the real reality, but it seemed like it was, and it was, as a matter of fact. I saw that I was in bed, rather than standing up and talking to my friends, and my first thought was a sense of relief, a thought of "Oh good, I wasn't really standing up and interacting with imaginary things and saying weird things to my friends and stuff. I had just imagined that." At this point I could move around and sort of talk again, but the feeling of weirdness was still there, and all I could say was, "Holy shit! Mindfuck! Man, aw fuck!! That was crazy!" Now, as the previous terror subsided (the shock and terror of being suddenly thrust into new planes of brutal existence and going basically from age 1 to age 21 in 3 minutes), I now had a feeling of superego-fear and paranoia that this feeling of "weirdness" would never go away, and that I'd have to write papers and go to class and live the rest of my life in this real, yet weird state with this lingering disorienting dreaminess. That fear lasted a few minutes. I was suddenly pretty thirsty, and I could still taste the Salvia in my mouth, and I had this idea that it might help get it out of my system more quickly by getting that taste out of my mouth, so I drank some water, and sat down and started to try to explain some of this experience to my friend, just as, meanwhile, the other friend was firing his experience up. I remember thinking, unsettled/distressed, "Noooo!!!! What is he doing???!! He doesn't know what's about to happen! He's not ready!"
I went on discussing my experience in a soft voice, so as to not disturb my friend's experience (although he apparently did hear some of what I was saying because his experience was structured by a wheel as well, just as I was talking about my wheel experience to my friend. Oops, sorry! (But I had to vent at least some of what I had experienced. There was no way I could keep this to myself. If my friend had wanted an undisturbed experience, it might have worked better if he had waited just a bit longer until I had told some of my experience and come totally down from it. Anyways, if you are reading this, sorry for the interference!).
So, anyways, after a few more minutes, that sense of paranoia went away, and I felt like my old self again, and I felt relieved, and now a little cleansed by the whole experience. I guess you could call this the "5th level," real reality without any lingering weirdness or paranoia. But it wasn't realized by any sudden transition, but just a gradual, but very distinct shaking off of a weird feeling.
All of what I have described took place in about 10 minutes. It felt muuuuuuch longer than that, but that's not to say that things were happening any less rapidly. They were still rapid and overwhelming. It was just so much stuff crammed into that window of subjective experience, even if that subjective experience seemed to last longer and seemed like it should have allowed for more stuff than the time duration of real reality. But maybe this longer subjective duration was an illusion created by precisely the fact that there was so much stuff going on. I don't know.
I continued to be very talkative for the rest of the night, trying to convey a fraction of what had befallen me.
I slept very well last night/this morning and woke up feeling pretty sharp.
Will I ever do Salvia again? Probably not. Do I recommend Salvia? I think this account speaks for itself. If it intrigues you, and you want to take the plunge, then go for it. But be warned that, as far as I can tell, there's no way to fully prepare for it and stay fully in control during a "breakthrough." You might set up a nice setting and whatnot, and you might remind yourself beforehand that, for example, "Satan doesn't exist, don't get freaked out if he shows up," and that might guide your brain's innermost, non-conscious processes to give you a gentler experience, but if Satan actually does show up, that reminder will be worth jack squat because you won't be the same person who went into this experience confident that Satan would not trip you up. Your real life could possibly be all out of touch from you, and you won't know that this thing in front of you doesn't really exist. Now that I realize things like this, is this one reason why I probably won't ever do Salvia ever again. If I got half-terrified at points during my thematically-neutral trip, I can only imagine what it would be like to experience the 2nd level (ego without a life history or outside knowledge) with a malevolent theme. The 1st level might not be too bad, because you wouldn't be able to make sense of fear, evil, potential for harm, etc. anyways, and the 3rd level might be a little scary, but you could always remind yourself that it's just a hallucination. But in the 2nd level, you'd never know, and you'd be to the point where you are attuned to its malevolent meaning.
That said, even if you meet Satan, it's only like 3 minutes of Satan (although it could feel longer...but it will have an end (although you won't know that in the moment, but meh...) And there's also the potential for very thematically-positive experiences, like, for the Mazatec Indians, meeting the Virgin Mary. And there are probably ways to prep your subconscious mind for that. In any case, maybe it's like one of those things that everyone should do once, just because the pontential for bad is finite, but the wonder and reflection of it all will stay with you for a long time afterwards. (It's by no means a recreational drug. It's more like making yourself into a research lab and performing a mental/psychological/philosophical experiment on yourself). I do see diminishing returns from having any more than one "breakthrough," though, which is why I probably won't be doing it again, even though I found this trip worthwhile.
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Addendum:
Here are many reflections on my experience and its philosophical/psychological implications:
Hmmm, after thinking it over a little more, it seems the issue of ideal forms might be a little more complicated than I first presumed.
Consider that I already could recognize the wheel *as* a wheel, with wheel-like characteristics (roundness, rotation), without having experienced other wheels from which to make this generalization. How could I have distinguished the outlines of wheelness or of the wheel-like object without having previously seen wheels? Where did the concept of the "game" come from? Were empiricial experiences and conceptualizations from my real life filtering back into this trip, somehow subconsciously, unbeknownst to me at the time? Even during the 1st stage, I came ready-made with the capability (but not the awareness) of climbing. How had I acquired that capability? (Perhaps now you can see how this can be such a mindfuck).
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Hmmm, I've thought about the ideal forms a bit more, and considering that they slid back into place at the same time as the ego, that suggests that one is not dependent on the other, but rather that they are co-incident, and that perhaps the ego itself is an artificially constructed ideal form, created by our minds as a shorthand for keeping track of our complex organism's actions and for providing continuity in this.
After all, Plato's ideal forms were concerned with explaining how particulars can be grouped into universals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals
If you think about the Ship of Theseus paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_paradox
you realize that we are not really the same material entity, moment to moment. We are physically changing, our cells are replacing themselves. Our material being at one moment is a particular than can not easily be equated with our being at another moment, at least not without resorting to the universal, the ideal form, of the ego. Without the ideal form of ego, we might not be able to bridge this change with a sensation of continuity. So perhaps the ego is a brain module that has been selected for by evolution in the higher-order animals in order to facilitate continuity of thought and perception, so that learning and planning behaviors can be undertaken and so that the animal can perform the behaviors it needs to do in order to survive. Whereas less complex animals might not have this brain module. If fish (or other less complex animals) really do only have a memory of like 7 seconds (such that they basically "begin their lives over again each 7 seconds"), or if they can only respond to immediate stimuli, then this might explain, psychologically, how this might work and what that might feel like for them.
Which makes me think, it's possible that my Trieb state was slightly longer than I remember, but perhaps the parts farther back were forgotten (perhaps that explains the vague, unsubstantial phase that I experienced immediately before that). Indeed, it has seemed a bit of a mystery to me that I was able to remember anything from this state, seeing as I had no way to keep myself continuously reminded of it or conscious of it as it was happening. Perhaps the only reason I was able to remember it was because it was immediately followed by an ego state where I was able to quickly reflect on it.
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Perhaps that also explains the feeling of time travel or actually reliving those moments of Trieb-state when remembering them from the ego state. Perhaps it was because it was the first point when I, as a conscious ego, was living those experiences.
Even more radically, perhaps what I remember as the Trieb state was not actually the Trieb state itself, but the first stirrings of my ego immediately reflecting on my Trieb state, trying to catch up, as it were (because apparently (I read this in a youtube comment, so I have no idea if this is true) Salvinorin A, the psychoactive ingredient in Salvia, works on the kappa-opioid receptors, which which causes the brain to not receive all of the essential signals and "micro-stutter," sort of like lag in a computer, giving the brain several options: either try to retransmit the data, or skip the data. So it was probably, at first, just skipping a lot of data, and perhaps the step where the brain's processor writes the data to its RAM was initially interfered with, or skipped, but then once these circuits started becoming operational again, the brain had to catch up on some of this data (thereby, in a sense, reliving it)), and then perhaps the real feeling of revelation came when the ego ran out of lagged data to re-process, and discovered that it could take in new data and reflect on it in real time.
But I think the time travel meant that I was experiencing the moments twice, both in the Trieb state, and in the ego state. Or perhaps twice in the ego state, once in an automatic reprocessing sort of way, and after the revelation of being able to consciously manipulate new data (instead of just consciously record it), I went back in my ego again and this time reflected on the Trieb data consciously, and perhaps it only felt like time travel because my attention was focused. Who knows? There are many possibilities.
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From wikipedia:
"The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The id acts as a pleasure principle: if not compelled by reality it seeks immediate enjoyment.[3] It is focused on selfishness and instant self-gratification."
No, this is just plain wrong. Drive does not seek pleasure. Drive is its own justification, or rather, outside of the need for any instrumental justification. That's what's meant by "drive," it just drives you. It does not stop and reflect on pleasure. The Id does not seek pleasure--it's the ego that seeks pleasure. After all, why would Trieb seek pleasure? It would do it no good. What is the function of pleasure? Is it not so that you think, "Oh, this felt good, I want to do it again," or "Oh, this felt bad, I want to avoid it in the future."? But how would this function if you don't have an ego that can register concepts such as "pleasure, " "good," "bad," and that can remember things as a continuous "I" into the future? The Id just takes a summary of the body's state and the sensory stimuli at any given moment, and reflexively, and un-reflectively, responds to that stimuli in a quasi-robotic, quasi-programmed way. The Id cannot remember pleasurable experiences from the past--it cannot even register what a pleasurable experience is. At least, that is my experience.
"The Ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief."
I would put it somewhat differently. Rather, the Id does not seek things for pleasure--its is not instrumental and reflective in this respect, but direct. It directly seeks the things it is programmed by instinct to seek. The ego is then subservient to this Id and is programmed to identify itself with the Id's drives and derive pleasure from figuring out clever, longer-term ways to accomplish the Id's drives.
Which raises an interesting possibility: an ego that refuses to be subservient to the Id, but rather, finds other ways of obtaining pleasure. This would mean that we would lose pleasure from eating, sleeping, watching out instinctually from our social standing, etc. In other words, we would no longer be looking out for our biological being, unless we saw an abstract, ego-centered reason for doing so. It would mean the ruin of our "normal" lives and possibly the end of our life itself. It would manifest itself as something incredibly pathological---like someone obsessed with music or philosophy who didn't care to eat or sleep or drink. There are a million different ways that this could manifest itself---its limits being determined only by the inventiveness of the ego.
For this reason, I would have to conclude that the Id is not something to be struggled with or opposed (as is commonly assumed, especially in our post-Victorian culture), but rather, you'd do well to hope that you really did have an assertive Id that was driving your ego, and that this connection was solid.
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So, because it is the exercise of the ego in the service of the Id that produces pleasure, we can imagine situations where the Id is satisfied (we obtain food, sleep, etc), but where our ego is not necessary for obtaining these and is not exercised, and therefore we experience no pleasure from satisfying our drives in this way.
What am I saying? We do not need to "imagine" such situations--they already exist in abundance around us. Industrial capitalism, paradoxically both the wealthiest and the most miserable epoch of humanity to-date, is very good at producing goods to satisfy drives, but very poor at exercising the ego in this endeavor. This explains why working at a mindless job is unfulfilling. One might think, "Oh, but you are earning money to buy food and a place to live. You are living the good life. Why can't you enjoy that?" It's because the ego was not exercised in the attainment of these drives.
Games are a way of the ego inventing challenge for itself so that it can exercise itself in the service of the Id. For example, imagine you have a grand table of food presented in front of you. All you have to do is walk over to the table and start eating. But there's no strategy involved, no exercise of the ego. So the ego says to itself, "Hey, let's say I have to do 2 cartwheels and count to 100 in German before I can have that food." Then you do the game, you feel a sense of accomplishment, and the food actually tastes pleasurable. (Whereas, otherwise, even the tastiest food might have tasted tasteless).
Remember that, during my 2nd level, I continued climbing the wheel, but it became a game. At first I was confused by this because I assumed that games would be caused by the ego evaluating itself against a standard set by a superego, and "winning the game" meant fulfilling the expectations of the superego. And, remember, that the superego didn't make its return until the 3rd level. But no, genuine *fun* games have nothing to do with the superego, but rather the Id. Indeed, a game is apt to become most unfun the minute it is turned into a superego injuction.
In any case, even Id-directed games are not an entirely wholesome fix. They entail the ego lying to itself---they entail ego irrationality. It is possible that the habit of judging irrationally with the ego could be deeply corrosive to the ego's ability to understand and analyze reality, which is the ego's essential function. Another reason games are also probably never a total substitute for the real thing is because there's always probably a portion of the ego that knows all along that it's a game. I doubt the ego can truly trick itself totally in this respect. Nevertheless, inventing games to satisfy the ego is probably better than having no ego satisfaction at all. Games are a coping mechanism.
Games are also a symptom of the real, fundamental problem: the lack of an environment that naturally exercises the ego, where drives are challenging to achieve but obtainable.
This does not entail an opposition to progress, to increasing one's (or a society's) productivity. In doing activity that increases the productivity of society, the ego will feel very satisfied from doing productive, strategic, clever work in order to better ensure the attainment of drives in the future. It will be able to reflect on its past efforts and feel satisfaction, recognizing the connection between its past efforts and the current satisfaction of the Id. (This, by the way, suggests a solid psychological reason for why "alienation" in the labor process feels unpleasant. You need to be able to consciously recognize the connection between the ego's efforts and the Id's satisfaction.)
What this does suggest about progress, however, is that it must be tangibly connected to one's efforts (so, for example, (and actual case studies bear this out), winning the lottery will not make you happy, unless your ego invested a lot of strategy and expectation on it--which is no more of a prudent course of action because one is likely to fail at this and waste all of this investment and demoralize the ego, more often than not.)
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The type of progress that is not apt to be satisfying to the ego is the type where, either, things keep on getting better without your input, or where you quit trying to progress and just decide that you've achieved enough progress, and now you can just sit back forever and let the fruits roll in. In the latter case, you will initially still feel satisfaction, but after a while, unless the maintenance of your level of progress comes to require the exercise of your ego, you will cease to derive pleasure from your steady-state. I fear that this is the situation of the advanced capitalist countries---if we wanted to, we could mostly stop working and satisfy our desires thanks to our current, stagnant level of productivity. The only way to employ our egos, aside from inventing countless games (which we do as well), is to strive for ever-higher levels of productivity. At some point, we will reach a physical resource ceiling on that. And what then???
Note: This also explains why unemployment-as-such, and also underemployment and employment that is perceived as pointless, are felt to be pernicious and deadening and depressing. But nor is it enough to give someone a contrived job of shuffling papers from one pile to the other and back again. The job has to be visibly, tangibly, consciously connected to the satisfaction of the person's Id. (If a task cannot help but be complex and many-sequenced, then perhaps helping a person's rational mind understand the role of his/her task in the broader production process would be sufficient for making the ego feel like it is usefully serving the Id.)
So, to consider an actual example, let's look at me: I'm doing lots of productive schoolwork (I'm certainly not living in complete sloth), so my ego should feel exercised and satisfied, right?
Well, the first problem is that, except for rare papers that I write that have a personal connection (such as if they have political or philosophical significance that I care about), I don't visibly recognize how my ego's efforts on those papers satisfy my drives (and it's possible that they actually don't satisfy my drives at all, even indirectly), whereas if the paper addresses come political theme, I can understand how, indirectly, that helps bolster the political project, which might eventually help me.
Ordinarily, if I didn't recognize the tangible way in which an activity of my ego was serving my Id, then my ego would not feel compelled to do the activity. I'd procrastinate and not feel like doing it. And this is indeed what happens, until...
The superego intervenes, forcing my ego to do the activity. The ego is now working to serve the superego with this task, not the Id, so the ego derives none of the satisfaction from the activity, only the relief of having temporarily escaped the roving gaze of the superego yet again.
The model hitherto postulated has been that the ego, in its normal, healthy state, must serve both the Id and the superego at the same time. I'm starting to think that this is actually a pathological state, rooted in our particular class society.
What I imagine is a different arrangement: the superego serving the ego, and the ego serving the Id. The superego can do much productive work in this regard. The ego cannot easily comprehend what other people in society are thinking or expecting---the ego is inherently self-centered, and this is appropriate for its role. But the ego does need to know this information about other people's mental states and social expectations, one way or the other, in order to perform rationally in a social context (and human beings are the most social animals of all). That's where the superego comes in. (Likewise, other social animals, such as dogs, probably have a well-developed superego as well, which maybe partly explains their extraordinary ability to read the emotions of other dogs and even humans across the species barrier! You can see the dog's superego at work whenever they exhibit the guilty, sulking face and whatnot.)
This is now my contention: in its healthy state, the superego is no more than an empathy-generator. It gives the ego a sense of what other people are thinking and feeling and expecting. It does this indirectly by making us feel the effect of morality, or what we might call a "conscience." If our ego is not trained to be skeptical, if our ego is used to being submissive to the superego, then the ego will interpret this morality or conscience as an absolute injunction given by an absolute, omnipotent authority. But if our ego is trained in skepticism, and it is not pathologically submissive to the superego, then the ego will interpret the superego's injunction as advice based on the superego's empathetic reading of the other complex, sentient beings with which one is interacting. (Non-sentient beings are less complex, and are easy enough to understand as mechanical forces for the ego to account for them).
The alert, skeptical, insightful ego can rationally weigh the options: for example, would I more effectively serve the Id by stealing this piece of food from my friend, or is that friend likely to react in a way that harms my overall ability to serve the Id in the future? If the superego detects that the friend will be mean and angry towards you anyways, your superego might present your ego with a feeling of disdain or hatred or envy, and you might be tempted to take the food anyways. If the superego judges that the other person has a mental state/constitution that will be conducive to mutual cooperation, the superego will serve the ego with a feeling of deep affection and bonding, and you will not judge it wise to steal the food.
How does the ego become submissive to the superego, and how does the ego become infected with fear of the superego? I'm not quite sure, but perhaps it has something to do with:
1. The advent of transcendent Gods. Your superego tries to figure out this infinitely powerful member of your sociality (that could potentially inflict severe pain on you), and the superego can't figure this God out since this God is held to be transcendence and unknowable. And so the superego becomes infected with fear, and the ego looks to the superego for guidance, but receives none, except a vague feeling of fear, and the ego keeps on looking back on and on ever more urgently, but all it receives is a feeling of fear, and pretty soon the ego becomes obsessed with figuring out the source of this fear, and it becomes fixated on the superego???
(Whereas a superego might be able to cope with an anthropomorphic God with anthropomorphic finiteness and faults and personality and whatnot...and when it comes to animistic, quasi-mechanical Gods, maybe even the plain-old ego would be suited for it. At the worst, placating an animistic god with rituals would be like having the ego invent a game for itself: "Okay, this field won't produce a harvest unless I sacrifice a goat to this God...okay, now I've accomplished that, I feel satisfied, now we have the god's favor (and we think we know this with certainty because it is held to be an animistic/mechanical/quasi-naturalistic god), and it will just depend on the rain to see if we get a good harvest.")
2. Child-parent relationships. At first, the child's relationship to the parent is likely to be like the human's relationship to an incomprehensible god, so maybe a certain amount of chronic fear and suprego fixation is unavoidable at a certain age. But, assuming nothing traumatic happens, the child grows up to possess the hallmark of adulthood--a calm and collected superego that serves the ego, instead of a fearful ego that serves a fearful superego.
3. Powerful leaders/states/groups in human society. When leaders/groups become powerful enough, they can act with irrational impunity, leading to a situation that closely models the previous two examples.
These are just some ideas. I'm really not sure at all (well, I'm not sure about any of this, but especially this part).
BTW, I think #3 suggests the psychological basis for anarchism. It is possible that anarchism (along with atheism and non-patriarchical family relations) are essential for our mental well-being.
So is it possible that monotheistic, transcendental religion has been nothing more than the world's greatest method of ego-effort-redirection (redirecting our ego's efforts from serving our Id, to serving some superego or God or ruler or set of clergy, etc.)? Furthermore, a method that co-opted natural animistic/pagan impulses, as well as the superego, in order to distort these two potentially useful devices into a tool of ego-effort-redirection and exploitation?
Just think about how, in today's world,
instead of superego --> ego --> Id,
we have our egos choose to sabotage our Id with sleep depression, anorexia, monastic celibacy (less so nowadays), etc., all in order to serve the superego or some God or ruler, with very little if any benefit coming back to our Id in the end (and even if some does come back, our ego is not aware of it and so cannot take joy in it).
So the question becomes, how to get the superego serving the ego once again? I think a good start would be to interrogate the superego in terms of its instrumental usefulness to the ego every single time you feel an injuction from the superego that you "should" do something.
Superego: "You should pray to God daily."
Ego: "How does that serve me?"
Superego: "You're missing the point. You should love God just for goodness sake!"
Ego: "Sorry, I'm not going to do anything unless I can see how it at least indirectly serves my mission of serving the Id."
Superego: "Oh, fine...well, you see, God will make you burn in hell if you don't."
Ego: "Why would he do that? And how do I know he really exists?"
Superego: "The mind and substance of God is unknowable!"
Ego: "Well, sheesh, a lot of help you are...why am I even listening to you anyways if you can't do your job of translating to me, in a language and system of incentives and feelings that I can understand, what other entities are thinking and what it would be rational for me to do about it? I'm going to ignore you whenever you are not providing me with some comprehensible insight...but insofar as you explain yourself, I will take your explanations into account."
Most people currently have this idea that the superego is naturally irrational. I think a hijacked, obfuscated superego can be irrational, but an effective superego should at least make intuitive sense and also be able to be interrogated by the ego. In principle, the ego could find out everything about other people's mental states that the superego can, but it would take much longer for the ego's analytical, reductionist methods to come to any conclusions, whereas the superego can obtain reasonably accurate conclusions using shorthand rules-of-thumb (which are probably partly programmed from evolution and thus partly innate), as long as the superego is not used to address questions for which it is not suited, such as probing the mind of a transcendental God and taking account of that God's potential effects. This suggests that it is not useful or advisable to try to extend morality, which is a product of the superego, to encompass the transcendental and divine absolute. Rather, feelings of morality are to be heeded only when they apply to mundane interactions between people. And we should occasionally interrogate this morality with egoistic rationality, just to let our egos make sure that our superegos have not been supplying bat-shit-insane rules of thumb, or rules-of-thumb for social conduct that are horribly obsolete now that we have moved out of our recent evolutionary context (paleolithic clan living).
So, there are actually two distinct kinds of irrationality: Id-irrationality and superego-irrationality. (Or rather, we should speak of "Id-nonrationality," because the Id has no self-evaluation along that scale. It has its own, self-justifying, given logic that has to do with our innate drives that are, presumably unchanging from our birth--the most basic aspects of survival and reproduction).
So, declaring "I desire X (not instrumentally in order to achieve something else, but rather, directly, for its own sake)," such as food, water, sleep, etc...that is Id-nonrationality. Equally, "I do not desire X" (directly, not for instrumental reasons (if it's for instrumental reasons, then you know it's the ego that is saying that). This is the sort of irrationality or non-rationality that we might as well accept or even celebrate. So, if you are sexually aroused by men and you desire sex with them in a direct way, for its own sake, (not for instrumental, strategic, ego-driven reasons), well, that's your Id talking, so you might as well embrace that nonrational desire and set your ego to the task of figuring out how to fulfill it.
This is completely different than "I *should* desire X" or "I *should not* desire X. That's your superego talking. If we happen to interrogate this statement with our ego and find that it has no reason behind it, that it is irrational, then we would do well to discard the superego's advice in this circumstance and not allow ourselves to be troubled by its remonstrances. So we hear "I *should not* desire sex with men." Our ego asks itself, "Why? How would that harm me and my quest for gaining pleasure through serving my Id, which very much has a drive to have sex with men?" If the ego or superego can't respond with reasons, then this injuction must be discarded. A helpful superego would respond with, "Well, most other people in our society don't like homosexual sex. I mean, trust me, they reeeeeeeaaaaally don't like other people having homosexual sex, for various reasons, and they will do much harm to you (and thus prevent the Id from pursuing its other Drives) if you try it." The rational ego would then weigh these consequences, and either go ahead with the sex if it deemed the rewards greater than the risks, or if not, then possibly figure out some of the reasons why those people don't like homosexuals having sex, figure out of there's some way to change that (which would mean having another dialog with the superego and investigating its sense of morality). Or, if the ego recognized that there were other, more urgent Drives of the Id to satisfy, then the ego would set about on some new task and just drop the whole intention of having homosexual sex for the time being.
So, notice, aside from prohibiting things, the superego can equally say, "You *should* desire X." I think this is the heart of the problem that Zizek talks about, where the new psychological problem of post-modern capitalism is the superego injunction to "enjoy." No, "enjoying" will not feel enjoyable unless it is done as the ego serving the Id (rather than the ego serving the superego).
Perhaps this suggests the psychological basis of that feeling that we call "freedom." Perhaps it is the sensation of being able to cleverly and strategically exercise the full powers of one's ego (which is empowered, but not determined, by the superego's advice) in order to serve one's Id Drives.
Finally, I feel like I have resolved a philosophical issue that has been tormenting me for this whole school year. I was continually sensing an affinity for irrationality in some circumstances, but a complete opposite revulsion towards irrationality in other circumstances. I felt myself becoming rootless, not knowing how to operate---concluding to myself that ultra-rationality was the only advisable way, but at the same time practicing certain daily irrationalities out of habit and intuitive choice. Now I understand that there are some irrationalities that I can wholeheartedly pursue, that will not lead me astray from happiness, namely the Id-irrationalities, and that there are, indeed, irrationalities that will harm my happiness and that I would do well to resolve with my completely rational, egoistic ego (just as it normally should be).
So, love is irrational, right? But now I know that expressing "I love you" (as simply a gleeful expression, without any egoistic, manipulative, strategic, instrumental intent) is fine. Whereas, thinking "I know I *should* love you...but why don't I? What is wrong with me?" is problematic, unless the ego can find a very good instrumental reason for taking this attitude.
Likewise, irrational organicism that one directly feels and pursues is fine. (Example: "I feel a direct (non-instrumental) Drive or desire to immerse myself in the organic wholesomeness of the outdoor beauty of the Ozarks.") Organicism that one seeks for instrumental, egoistic reasons could also be fine, so long as this is rational organicism. (Example: "Going 'back to the Land in my Heimat, the Ozarks, will clear my mind, improve my eating habits and health, and help me finish this research paper, which in turn will help me serve my Id's Drives by getting me a future job, future employment, and money"). Whereas irrational organicism that one feels a superego injunction to possess, or irrational organicism that has irrational moral implications, will be problematic. (Example: "I should feel love for my Ozark Heimat, and so should all others, or else they are untermensch and should be killed.")
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Ah, if only we were still forced to hunt wild deer for food in order to survive, we could know the true satisfaction of satisfying our hunger thanks to the brilliant cleverness of our rational ego.
(Whereas modern deer hunting is a type of game where our ego has to trick itself into thinking that this hunting is actually necessary to obtain the meat...even when done with bow-and-arrow...actually, especially when done with bow-and-arrow, because that requires the added self-trickery of imagining that one doesn't have any better tools that one could use. At least when you use a rifle, you are being honest to yourself about that...although the sport or gamesmanship of it is lessened because of that. Really, the more you try to go back to that primitive life, the more of a game of self-trickery it is. That's another reason why I really wonder about the efficacy of "going back to the land" with some sort of commune or something. Unless we could make it productive in a practical way, I fear that we'd always have this nagging feeling in us that the only reason we were able to do this is because we live in an industrial society of abundance, and that our happiness didn't really depend on our efforts on the land, and that we could leave it any time we wanted, such that it would take self-trickery to convince ourselves that it was a meaningful endeavor. Don't get me wrong, it would indeed be pleasant. But it would also need to require the cleverness and constructiveness of our egos in order to be really satisfying. Perhaps fixing up a house would fulfill that requirement.
Even so, there's no way to really go back to that primitive, precarious, troubled, and yet acutely satisfying way of life (living off the fruits of a farm and not begrudging it with the thought that you could be doing all these other things in the city) without doing away with modern society entirely, and I do not think that would be worth it. I continue to hold out hope that we can find additional ways of satisfying our egos in modern, industrial, information society. We just need to make a few modifications to our lifestyles, our culture, and our political and social systems.)
The sparknotes summary: Freud was completely right, Kant and Plato were completely wrong, and Bach's harpsichord solo from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 was waaaay too overwhelming to have playing during a Salvia experience. Or perhaps it was just right. It was not an unpleasant experience, just bat-shit-insane extreme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxzY3tFTz9k
That's what I chose to have playing. I had a feeling that the absolute mathematical perfection and periodicity of the piece, its chord progressions, etc., would be perfect for comfortably structuring the experience. I thought that it would be better to have something that is totally predictable and that comfortably fills up the room with a warm sound, than to risk having random noise interruptions come into play. To a certain extent, I think I was prudent in this respect, although the part about 1:54 into the piece, where he's going down the scales and doing that sort of electric guitar solo sort of thing, that was waaaay overwhelming, and literally impacted me physically as a sort of waterfall washing over me.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the background:
Salvia is an entheogenic dissociative hallucinogen, traditionally used by the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca for generations, and just recently discovered by Western science and Western drug culture. For more background on Salvia, watch this documentary:
Sacred Weeds:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4829797616419921428
Fortunately, Salvia is not regulated (Yet) under Federal law, nor (yet) under Massachusetts law. (I say "yet" because, like I said, this drug is relatively new to Western culture, and lately states have been rushing to make it illegal. It has already been made illegal in Missouri, for example. Now, in my opinion, that's completely unnecessary, and probably counter-productive. This substance is not addictive (trust me, there's no way in hell this thing could be addictive), you are as harmless as a puppy to others while you are on it (usually completely immobilized, and if mobile at all, then completely uncoordinated (if not totally unaware of your surroundings) and only a potential harm to yourself if there happen to be things like open flames or sharp objects that you could bumble into (which is a reason why it's advisable to have a sitter with you). Additionally, Salvia only lasts 5-10 minutes, it is non-toxic, it has no known side effects, aside from a potential for some minor headaches afterwards and sweating during the experience, and there are no known adverse long-term effects. Anyways, because it is currently legal in Massachusetts, that's why I feel perfectly comfortable discussing this on facebook and elsewhere. The free exchange of information and experiences is an important reason for keeping it legal, if nothing else. At least people will be able to educate themselves about it before they do it.
News reports suggesting that people "get impaired judgment" on this stuff or that people would be a "danger on the road" are laughable. If you take a reasonable dose, you will have NO judgments at all and NO ability to physically do anything, much less even attempt to drive a car. I'm sure some idiot somewhere at some point will take a mild dose and then try to drive a car and kill someone, but there are thousands of idiots who abuse alcohol and get themselves and others killed. We can't make the whole world idiot-proof, and there will always be idiots, so we just need to deal with them as they come along. Obviously, driving on Salvia should be illegal, I don't think anyone would dispute that. And maybe you would want to regulate Salvia so that there is an age requirement for buying it, because you really do need to be an informed adult to mess with this stuff. But should it be made totally illegal? No, of course not.
Now, given that it's currently legal and has no major side effects, why would I not want to take it ever again? Because one "breakthrough" is more than enough, oh boy. The experience was so goddamn intense, the thought of doing it again just seems inconceivable right now.
Last night was actually my second time doing it, but the first time I did it, I didn't do as much (only half a bowl of 10x extract) or inhale as well, and I got a much milder effect. That time, I was listening to Bach's "Air" from Suite No. 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyLo9-Voy5s
Naturally, that was also bound to facilitate a gentler experience. Basically, that time, I never lost my ego or my grounding in reality. I felt a little dreamy, like an elusive "something" was happening, but I maintained a consistent train of consciousness throughout. There were no "discontinuous functions" of existence, if you will, just gentle, sloping functions. When I would open my eyes, everything continued to look as before, although there was a moment where there seemed to be a clear, viscous, rotating fluid filling the room, barely perceptible to my vision, like dissolved sugar in water. The one other notable moment in that 5-minute experience was one where I got a distinct emotional feeling of tender, innocent, and eager, quasi-erotic puppy love well up in me for a brief moment--the sort of feeling I had at first with my very first girlfriend, and that I've never quite felt since. I remember gently biting my lip at this point, sort of like when you are aroused during a sexual act. It was a rewarding, wholesome moment, a revisitation of something I now realize I've lost to a certain extent, and something that I would like to rediscover, if at all possible. After that, there was a point where another friend walked in (there were already 3 friends trip-sitting for me in the room. We were all taking turns). I remember hearing his steps in the hallway and it seeming like the steps were echoing in some reaaaaally reaaaaaally long cavern. When he walked in, I opened my eyes and mumbled to him with a grin, "Howdy thar" and I sort of gestured to him with a sort of salute, and at that moment I was overcome with giggles galore. The juxtaposition of the baroque music, all my friends sitting there in a college dorm room, and my "howdy thar" all seemed so incredibly ridiculous. So I pretty much gleefully giggled for the rest of the time, for half a minute or so, until I had more or less come out of it. I came away feeling that it was a very worthwhile experience. Not exactly "pleasurable," but it upwelled some wholesome emotions in me and gave me some reflections on that puppy-love feeling that I've been missing in life.
This second time was, I guess, "worthwhile" too, but in a totally different way. Again, none of it was "pleasant" or "unpleasant" in a sensory sort of way. It was just incredibly shocking.
I went into this second time thinking that it would be a bit like the first. I didn't really have a strong desire to do it again, but I was curious to see what would happen this time, and we had a little bit left, so we figured we might as well use up the rest of it (this time, I had 2 friends with me, trip-sitting and waiting to go for their turn).
I did about 3/4 of a bowl of the same 10x extract. It was nothing like the first. Well, I was also listening to a more energetic Bach piece, and I was a little keyed-up, but tired, after having had a busy week, so maybe that influenced it.
Here's the narrative:
I take two hits on the pipe. I could already feel some of the first effects during my second hit. My friends start the music. I lay down, close my eyes. A period of time elapses that seems vague, lacking in substance, and long, like when you go to sleep, wake up, but can't remember dreaming anything, but yet at the same time, not like those times where you just blink and wake back up again. You have a vague awareness that some time has passed, but that is all. In this case, even though it felt long, I have been able to ascertain (from reconstructing the timeline from my memory of the later parts of the song playing--and the song was only a little over 3 minute long) that this part must have been like only 10 seconds. Then...
Next thing "I" can remember, "I" am trying to climb up and upon the floor and the music, which are both physically integrated as a sort of big wheel. But not only am I hallucinating--I am hallucinating not even as "myself" who understands what a hallucination is.
I say "I" or "myself" in quotation marks because I had no concept of "I" at this point. I had heard of people talk about this sort of state before, of being separated from the ego, and I used to think, "Ah, that's bullshit, how would that even work? The ego is, like, fundamental to existence. They've got to be imagining all of this stuff." I never really believed in Freudian psychology...until now.
My consciousness was a complete blank-slate. Everything I had known and experienced from my entire life before that was gone, and I was totally lacking in any awareness of that absence in the first place. That moment felt like the beginning of my entire existence, and yet I had no concept of a beginning of an existence at the time. All of this I'm telling you know is from my re-realizations that occurred to me after I had reached the 2nd plane of consciousness and was looking back on my immediate past from the 1st plane of consciousness. What do I mean by "planes of consciousness"?
*1st plane of consciousness: I am an id without an ego or a superego. I have no self-reflection, no Vernunft (Reason), no Wille (Will), no awareness that "I" am an id, no awareness of what an "I", an "id", or an "ego" would be. I don't have a concept of culminative feelings, such as pleasure or pain. All I have is "Drive." Trieb (to use the Freudian term in the original German). All "I" had was aversion or attraction to acting on stimuli, with no awareness that this wheel that I am trying to climb constitutes a "stimuli" or that I have a "Trieb" that I am responding to in the first place. I had no idea why I was trying to climb the wheel, nor any concept of why I would need to have a reason to climb the wheel, nor any idea of what constituted a "wheel," or "climbing" or cause-and-effect, or something as "space-like" or "time-like" or anything. I try to climb the wheel, not because I anticipate renewed pleasure from doing so, nor because I am aware of a drive to do so, but just because that drive is there, driving me (of course, nor do I have any concept of "it", as a foreign force, driving "me." It's not foreign, it's just all there is, and I'm not even aware of it at this point. And besides, although I had perfectly vivid and precise sensory information coming at me (in other words, even though I had no categories of reason to structure it, the "world" as I knew it was still there as clear as ever), I would have been incapable of picking out this Trieb as something distinct from any other stimulus. All there was was the totality of stimuli, without any essential or categorical markers. Only after later reflection could I distinguish, for example, one aspect of the total stimulus as a "wheel" with essential wheel-like characteristics. I consider this to be a resounding rebuttal to Plato's idea of the "ideal forms" as fundamental to existence. Au contraire, my friend, apparently there can conceivably be existence outside of ideal forms. The material world is fundamental, and we manufacture ideal forms to summarize all of this stimulus so as to figure out a short-hand for how the world's cause-and effect-works so that we can react to it.
At this point, as far as I could tell, this was the only existence that "I" had ever experienced (but I wasn't even able to self-reflect on it, nor was I aware of a lack of ability to do so). I now imagine that this is what it feels like to be a lizard, an ant, or a lobotomized human.
The first searing burst of revelation came after getting myself over one of the nodes of the wheel (the wheel had nodes like a paddle wheel (the paddles are the nodes) or a ferris wheel (the passenger cars are the nodes). As I came up over the node, an entire new filter of existence opened up before me. Suddenly all of the shapes "slid" into their ideal forms. I recognized the wheel as a wheel. And I recognized myself as an "I". This burst of revelation was like being a devoted Catholic all your life, and suddenly learning without a doubt that God doesn't exist. It was like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDgXQPxzY8E
Now began the most interesting portion of my experience, the 2nd level of consciousness, me as an ego and with reason, but still without my life history. I began to reflect on my experiences that I just had during my 1st level of consciousness as one would reflect on an eternity of existence (at this time, my 1st and 2nd level existences were all that I knew). I had perfect, vivid memory of this 1st level time (and even now, I fortunately still have fairly vivid memory of the whole thing, even the earliest pre-ego stage, but I am writing this down now the day after, partly in order to also get this recorded, lest details slip away from me). I also began to reflect on my current existence around me, the wheel of the floor and the music spinning, which was still the center of my attention, and which I was still trying to climb, but now I found pleasure in it, and a desire to do more of it, and it became a rewarding sort of game to be doing it. At this point, I thought nothing strange of the fact that the music was physically integrated with the floor and that I was climbing on it. Also, time would often seem to slow down or speed up depending on how fast the wheel was turning, as if those two things were mechanically connected as well. And when I would ponder my immediately preceding pre-ego existence, it was as if I could really time-travel and relive those moments again momentarily, but this time as my 2nd-level self with my 2nd-level self-reflection (I still had no concept of "levels," per se, just that the previous segment of existence was very very strange). Also, I had no idea that anything was particularly strange about this reality around me, with me climbing on the music and doing momentary time-travel and whatnot. This seemed perfectly normal, just how the world worked. I guess I had no a priori ideas or structures to suggest otherwise. This does not seem to support Kant's case for a priori structures for perceiving existence, am I right?
After a few moments of this, I rounded another node on the wheel and got my 2nd and most shocking searing burst of re-realization: an awareness of my entire life history flooded back to me, I realized that there was existence that preceded the 1st level, that I was myself, a college student, and that I had just smoked some Salvia. I saw myself climbing a wheel of floor and music in my friend's dorm room, and realized two things:
1. The world does not actually work like this. I'm tripping balls.
2. I *should* (now with more of the superego tinge of meaning) not be up out of the bed, trying to climb imaginary things, or else I'm going to freak my friends out and look like a psycho. (So, yeah, this is also, apparently, when my superego came flooding back, the most brutal re-realization of them all. Before that, I didn't have any thoughts of "should" or "should not").
So this is when I started to freak out and desperately yearn for the experience to be over. At this point, I'm hallucinating, and I know that I'm hallucinating. I guess that's worse than hallucinating, but being totally unaware, like being totally in the Matrix, vs. being re-introduced to the Matrix.
This is also the point when the Bach harpsichord solo got to the part with the fast descending scales at about 1:55 seconds in. The music now looked and felt like a pillar of water shooting out of my friend's computer, over the wheel, and splashing down from the wheel and drenching me. It was overwhelming and scary, but at the same time I felt elated, kind of like the first time I had an ejaculation. That feeling that your whole body is going into an electrical spasm, and for a split second you think it's too much and that you're not going to be able to withstand it, but also at the same time you like it and feel charged by it. So at this point, I start laughing (both in reality, and in my mental world), and in the real world I try to get up from the bed and reach towards the computer (in reality I had simply been laying there the whole time), and in my mental world I jump from the wheel and run to hug/wrestle with the pillar of music/water. That seemed to relieve some tension. I also at this time realized that it was Bach's harpsichord solo from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 that I was listening to, and that I had selected it, and I was thinking to myself "This is way too overwhelming, I should have picked something else...I just need to hold on a little longer, it's almost going to be over." Apparently my friends directed me back onto the bed at this point, and were laughing along with me (I was laughing, and I even kinda remember laughing, even though I felt half-terrified inside. At the time it felt like a release of tension, of the sense of everything being so overwhelming, and a recognition that "I'm not in control yet, I just have to lay back and take it easy and ride it out.) In my mind, I see my friends again, and I think that I am trying to excuse my behavior (my trying to scale the imaginary wheel) and reassure them that I'm okay. Things start to seem real again. I stop paying attention to the wheel and the water, and when I glance back, they are no longer there. The music no longer produces a physical sensation, but just sounds like music again.
Suddenly I had the 3rd burst of revelation (going to the 4th and final plane of existence, real reality), and this one felt like waking up from a dream within a dream. (Like, the previous coming back to reality had been not entirely real, like how when you wake up in a dream, and then wake up again and realize that you had just woken up into another dream). I had some minor doubts that *this* was finally the real reality, but it seemed like it was, and it was, as a matter of fact. I saw that I was in bed, rather than standing up and talking to my friends, and my first thought was a sense of relief, a thought of "Oh good, I wasn't really standing up and interacting with imaginary things and saying weird things to my friends and stuff. I had just imagined that." At this point I could move around and sort of talk again, but the feeling of weirdness was still there, and all I could say was, "Holy shit! Mindfuck! Man, aw fuck!! That was crazy!" Now, as the previous terror subsided (the shock and terror of being suddenly thrust into new planes of brutal existence and going basically from age 1 to age 21 in 3 minutes), I now had a feeling of superego-fear and paranoia that this feeling of "weirdness" would never go away, and that I'd have to write papers and go to class and live the rest of my life in this real, yet weird state with this lingering disorienting dreaminess. That fear lasted a few minutes. I was suddenly pretty thirsty, and I could still taste the Salvia in my mouth, and I had this idea that it might help get it out of my system more quickly by getting that taste out of my mouth, so I drank some water, and sat down and started to try to explain some of this experience to my friend, just as, meanwhile, the other friend was firing his experience up. I remember thinking, unsettled/distressed, "Noooo!!!! What is he doing???!! He doesn't know what's about to happen! He's not ready!"
I went on discussing my experience in a soft voice, so as to not disturb my friend's experience (although he apparently did hear some of what I was saying because his experience was structured by a wheel as well, just as I was talking about my wheel experience to my friend. Oops, sorry! (But I had to vent at least some of what I had experienced. There was no way I could keep this to myself. If my friend had wanted an undisturbed experience, it might have worked better if he had waited just a bit longer until I had told some of my experience and come totally down from it. Anyways, if you are reading this, sorry for the interference!).
So, anyways, after a few more minutes, that sense of paranoia went away, and I felt like my old self again, and I felt relieved, and now a little cleansed by the whole experience. I guess you could call this the "5th level," real reality without any lingering weirdness or paranoia. But it wasn't realized by any sudden transition, but just a gradual, but very distinct shaking off of a weird feeling.
All of what I have described took place in about 10 minutes. It felt muuuuuuch longer than that, but that's not to say that things were happening any less rapidly. They were still rapid and overwhelming. It was just so much stuff crammed into that window of subjective experience, even if that subjective experience seemed to last longer and seemed like it should have allowed for more stuff than the time duration of real reality. But maybe this longer subjective duration was an illusion created by precisely the fact that there was so much stuff going on. I don't know.
I continued to be very talkative for the rest of the night, trying to convey a fraction of what had befallen me.
I slept very well last night/this morning and woke up feeling pretty sharp.
Will I ever do Salvia again? Probably not. Do I recommend Salvia? I think this account speaks for itself. If it intrigues you, and you want to take the plunge, then go for it. But be warned that, as far as I can tell, there's no way to fully prepare for it and stay fully in control during a "breakthrough." You might set up a nice setting and whatnot, and you might remind yourself beforehand that, for example, "Satan doesn't exist, don't get freaked out if he shows up," and that might guide your brain's innermost, non-conscious processes to give you a gentler experience, but if Satan actually does show up, that reminder will be worth jack squat because you won't be the same person who went into this experience confident that Satan would not trip you up. Your real life could possibly be all out of touch from you, and you won't know that this thing in front of you doesn't really exist. Now that I realize things like this, is this one reason why I probably won't ever do Salvia ever again. If I got half-terrified at points during my thematically-neutral trip, I can only imagine what it would be like to experience the 2nd level (ego without a life history or outside knowledge) with a malevolent theme. The 1st level might not be too bad, because you wouldn't be able to make sense of fear, evil, potential for harm, etc. anyways, and the 3rd level might be a little scary, but you could always remind yourself that it's just a hallucination. But in the 2nd level, you'd never know, and you'd be to the point where you are attuned to its malevolent meaning.
That said, even if you meet Satan, it's only like 3 minutes of Satan (although it could feel longer...but it will have an end (although you won't know that in the moment, but meh...) And there's also the potential for very thematically-positive experiences, like, for the Mazatec Indians, meeting the Virgin Mary. And there are probably ways to prep your subconscious mind for that. In any case, maybe it's like one of those things that everyone should do once, just because the pontential for bad is finite, but the wonder and reflection of it all will stay with you for a long time afterwards. (It's by no means a recreational drug. It's more like making yourself into a research lab and performing a mental/psychological/philosophical experiment on yourself). I do see diminishing returns from having any more than one "breakthrough," though, which is why I probably won't be doing it again, even though I found this trip worthwhile.
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Addendum:
Here are many reflections on my experience and its philosophical/psychological implications:
Hmmm, after thinking it over a little more, it seems the issue of ideal forms might be a little more complicated than I first presumed.
Consider that I already could recognize the wheel *as* a wheel, with wheel-like characteristics (roundness, rotation), without having experienced other wheels from which to make this generalization. How could I have distinguished the outlines of wheelness or of the wheel-like object without having previously seen wheels? Where did the concept of the "game" come from? Were empiricial experiences and conceptualizations from my real life filtering back into this trip, somehow subconsciously, unbeknownst to me at the time? Even during the 1st stage, I came ready-made with the capability (but not the awareness) of climbing. How had I acquired that capability? (Perhaps now you can see how this can be such a mindfuck).
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Hmmm, I've thought about the ideal forms a bit more, and considering that they slid back into place at the same time as the ego, that suggests that one is not dependent on the other, but rather that they are co-incident, and that perhaps the ego itself is an artificially constructed ideal form, created by our minds as a shorthand for keeping track of our complex organism's actions and for providing continuity in this.
After all, Plato's ideal forms were concerned with explaining how particulars can be grouped into universals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals
If you think about the Ship of Theseus paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_paradox
you realize that we are not really the same material entity, moment to moment. We are physically changing, our cells are replacing themselves. Our material being at one moment is a particular than can not easily be equated with our being at another moment, at least not without resorting to the universal, the ideal form, of the ego. Without the ideal form of ego, we might not be able to bridge this change with a sensation of continuity. So perhaps the ego is a brain module that has been selected for by evolution in the higher-order animals in order to facilitate continuity of thought and perception, so that learning and planning behaviors can be undertaken and so that the animal can perform the behaviors it needs to do in order to survive. Whereas less complex animals might not have this brain module. If fish (or other less complex animals) really do only have a memory of like 7 seconds (such that they basically "begin their lives over again each 7 seconds"), or if they can only respond to immediate stimuli, then this might explain, psychologically, how this might work and what that might feel like for them.
Which makes me think, it's possible that my Trieb state was slightly longer than I remember, but perhaps the parts farther back were forgotten (perhaps that explains the vague, unsubstantial phase that I experienced immediately before that). Indeed, it has seemed a bit of a mystery to me that I was able to remember anything from this state, seeing as I had no way to keep myself continuously reminded of it or conscious of it as it was happening. Perhaps the only reason I was able to remember it was because it was immediately followed by an ego state where I was able to quickly reflect on it.
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Perhaps that also explains the feeling of time travel or actually reliving those moments of Trieb-state when remembering them from the ego state. Perhaps it was because it was the first point when I, as a conscious ego, was living those experiences.
Even more radically, perhaps what I remember as the Trieb state was not actually the Trieb state itself, but the first stirrings of my ego immediately reflecting on my Trieb state, trying to catch up, as it were (because apparently (I read this in a youtube comment, so I have no idea if this is true) Salvinorin A, the psychoactive ingredient in Salvia, works on the kappa-opioid receptors, which which causes the brain to not receive all of the essential signals and "micro-stutter," sort of like lag in a computer, giving the brain several options: either try to retransmit the data, or skip the data. So it was probably, at first, just skipping a lot of data, and perhaps the step where the brain's processor writes the data to its RAM was initially interfered with, or skipped, but then once these circuits started becoming operational again, the brain had to catch up on some of this data (thereby, in a sense, reliving it)), and then perhaps the real feeling of revelation came when the ego ran out of lagged data to re-process, and discovered that it could take in new data and reflect on it in real time.
But I think the time travel meant that I was experiencing the moments twice, both in the Trieb state, and in the ego state. Or perhaps twice in the ego state, once in an automatic reprocessing sort of way, and after the revelation of being able to consciously manipulate new data (instead of just consciously record it), I went back in my ego again and this time reflected on the Trieb data consciously, and perhaps it only felt like time travel because my attention was focused. Who knows? There are many possibilities.
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From wikipedia:
"The Id comprises the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains the basic drives. The id acts as a pleasure principle: if not compelled by reality it seeks immediate enjoyment.[3] It is focused on selfishness and instant self-gratification."
No, this is just plain wrong. Drive does not seek pleasure. Drive is its own justification, or rather, outside of the need for any instrumental justification. That's what's meant by "drive," it just drives you. It does not stop and reflect on pleasure. The Id does not seek pleasure--it's the ego that seeks pleasure. After all, why would Trieb seek pleasure? It would do it no good. What is the function of pleasure? Is it not so that you think, "Oh, this felt good, I want to do it again," or "Oh, this felt bad, I want to avoid it in the future."? But how would this function if you don't have an ego that can register concepts such as "pleasure, " "good," "bad," and that can remember things as a continuous "I" into the future? The Id just takes a summary of the body's state and the sensory stimuli at any given moment, and reflexively, and un-reflectively, responds to that stimuli in a quasi-robotic, quasi-programmed way. The Id cannot remember pleasurable experiences from the past--it cannot even register what a pleasurable experience is. At least, that is my experience.
"The Ego acts according to the reality principle; i.e. it seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bringing grief."
I would put it somewhat differently. Rather, the Id does not seek things for pleasure--its is not instrumental and reflective in this respect, but direct. It directly seeks the things it is programmed by instinct to seek. The ego is then subservient to this Id and is programmed to identify itself with the Id's drives and derive pleasure from figuring out clever, longer-term ways to accomplish the Id's drives.
Which raises an interesting possibility: an ego that refuses to be subservient to the Id, but rather, finds other ways of obtaining pleasure. This would mean that we would lose pleasure from eating, sleeping, watching out instinctually from our social standing, etc. In other words, we would no longer be looking out for our biological being, unless we saw an abstract, ego-centered reason for doing so. It would mean the ruin of our "normal" lives and possibly the end of our life itself. It would manifest itself as something incredibly pathological---like someone obsessed with music or philosophy who didn't care to eat or sleep or drink. There are a million different ways that this could manifest itself---its limits being determined only by the inventiveness of the ego.
For this reason, I would have to conclude that the Id is not something to be struggled with or opposed (as is commonly assumed, especially in our post-Victorian culture), but rather, you'd do well to hope that you really did have an assertive Id that was driving your ego, and that this connection was solid.
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So, because it is the exercise of the ego in the service of the Id that produces pleasure, we can imagine situations where the Id is satisfied (we obtain food, sleep, etc), but where our ego is not necessary for obtaining these and is not exercised, and therefore we experience no pleasure from satisfying our drives in this way.
What am I saying? We do not need to "imagine" such situations--they already exist in abundance around us. Industrial capitalism, paradoxically both the wealthiest and the most miserable epoch of humanity to-date, is very good at producing goods to satisfy drives, but very poor at exercising the ego in this endeavor. This explains why working at a mindless job is unfulfilling. One might think, "Oh, but you are earning money to buy food and a place to live. You are living the good life. Why can't you enjoy that?" It's because the ego was not exercised in the attainment of these drives.
Games are a way of the ego inventing challenge for itself so that it can exercise itself in the service of the Id. For example, imagine you have a grand table of food presented in front of you. All you have to do is walk over to the table and start eating. But there's no strategy involved, no exercise of the ego. So the ego says to itself, "Hey, let's say I have to do 2 cartwheels and count to 100 in German before I can have that food." Then you do the game, you feel a sense of accomplishment, and the food actually tastes pleasurable. (Whereas, otherwise, even the tastiest food might have tasted tasteless).
Remember that, during my 2nd level, I continued climbing the wheel, but it became a game. At first I was confused by this because I assumed that games would be caused by the ego evaluating itself against a standard set by a superego, and "winning the game" meant fulfilling the expectations of the superego. And, remember, that the superego didn't make its return until the 3rd level. But no, genuine *fun* games have nothing to do with the superego, but rather the Id. Indeed, a game is apt to become most unfun the minute it is turned into a superego injuction.
In any case, even Id-directed games are not an entirely wholesome fix. They entail the ego lying to itself---they entail ego irrationality. It is possible that the habit of judging irrationally with the ego could be deeply corrosive to the ego's ability to understand and analyze reality, which is the ego's essential function. Another reason games are also probably never a total substitute for the real thing is because there's always probably a portion of the ego that knows all along that it's a game. I doubt the ego can truly trick itself totally in this respect. Nevertheless, inventing games to satisfy the ego is probably better than having no ego satisfaction at all. Games are a coping mechanism.
Games are also a symptom of the real, fundamental problem: the lack of an environment that naturally exercises the ego, where drives are challenging to achieve but obtainable.
This does not entail an opposition to progress, to increasing one's (or a society's) productivity. In doing activity that increases the productivity of society, the ego will feel very satisfied from doing productive, strategic, clever work in order to better ensure the attainment of drives in the future. It will be able to reflect on its past efforts and feel satisfaction, recognizing the connection between its past efforts and the current satisfaction of the Id. (This, by the way, suggests a solid psychological reason for why "alienation" in the labor process feels unpleasant. You need to be able to consciously recognize the connection between the ego's efforts and the Id's satisfaction.)
What this does suggest about progress, however, is that it must be tangibly connected to one's efforts (so, for example, (and actual case studies bear this out), winning the lottery will not make you happy, unless your ego invested a lot of strategy and expectation on it--which is no more of a prudent course of action because one is likely to fail at this and waste all of this investment and demoralize the ego, more often than not.)
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The type of progress that is not apt to be satisfying to the ego is the type where, either, things keep on getting better without your input, or where you quit trying to progress and just decide that you've achieved enough progress, and now you can just sit back forever and let the fruits roll in. In the latter case, you will initially still feel satisfaction, but after a while, unless the maintenance of your level of progress comes to require the exercise of your ego, you will cease to derive pleasure from your steady-state. I fear that this is the situation of the advanced capitalist countries---if we wanted to, we could mostly stop working and satisfy our desires thanks to our current, stagnant level of productivity. The only way to employ our egos, aside from inventing countless games (which we do as well), is to strive for ever-higher levels of productivity. At some point, we will reach a physical resource ceiling on that. And what then???
Note: This also explains why unemployment-as-such, and also underemployment and employment that is perceived as pointless, are felt to be pernicious and deadening and depressing. But nor is it enough to give someone a contrived job of shuffling papers from one pile to the other and back again. The job has to be visibly, tangibly, consciously connected to the satisfaction of the person's Id. (If a task cannot help but be complex and many-sequenced, then perhaps helping a person's rational mind understand the role of his/her task in the broader production process would be sufficient for making the ego feel like it is usefully serving the Id.)
So, to consider an actual example, let's look at me: I'm doing lots of productive schoolwork (I'm certainly not living in complete sloth), so my ego should feel exercised and satisfied, right?
Well, the first problem is that, except for rare papers that I write that have a personal connection (such as if they have political or philosophical significance that I care about), I don't visibly recognize how my ego's efforts on those papers satisfy my drives (and it's possible that they actually don't satisfy my drives at all, even indirectly), whereas if the paper addresses come political theme, I can understand how, indirectly, that helps bolster the political project, which might eventually help me.
Ordinarily, if I didn't recognize the tangible way in which an activity of my ego was serving my Id, then my ego would not feel compelled to do the activity. I'd procrastinate and not feel like doing it. And this is indeed what happens, until...
The superego intervenes, forcing my ego to do the activity. The ego is now working to serve the superego with this task, not the Id, so the ego derives none of the satisfaction from the activity, only the relief of having temporarily escaped the roving gaze of the superego yet again.
The model hitherto postulated has been that the ego, in its normal, healthy state, must serve both the Id and the superego at the same time. I'm starting to think that this is actually a pathological state, rooted in our particular class society.
What I imagine is a different arrangement: the superego serving the ego, and the ego serving the Id. The superego can do much productive work in this regard. The ego cannot easily comprehend what other people in society are thinking or expecting---the ego is inherently self-centered, and this is appropriate for its role. But the ego does need to know this information about other people's mental states and social expectations, one way or the other, in order to perform rationally in a social context (and human beings are the most social animals of all). That's where the superego comes in. (Likewise, other social animals, such as dogs, probably have a well-developed superego as well, which maybe partly explains their extraordinary ability to read the emotions of other dogs and even humans across the species barrier! You can see the dog's superego at work whenever they exhibit the guilty, sulking face and whatnot.)
This is now my contention: in its healthy state, the superego is no more than an empathy-generator. It gives the ego a sense of what other people are thinking and feeling and expecting. It does this indirectly by making us feel the effect of morality, or what we might call a "conscience." If our ego is not trained to be skeptical, if our ego is used to being submissive to the superego, then the ego will interpret this morality or conscience as an absolute injunction given by an absolute, omnipotent authority. But if our ego is trained in skepticism, and it is not pathologically submissive to the superego, then the ego will interpret the superego's injunction as advice based on the superego's empathetic reading of the other complex, sentient beings with which one is interacting. (Non-sentient beings are less complex, and are easy enough to understand as mechanical forces for the ego to account for them).
The alert, skeptical, insightful ego can rationally weigh the options: for example, would I more effectively serve the Id by stealing this piece of food from my friend, or is that friend likely to react in a way that harms my overall ability to serve the Id in the future? If the superego detects that the friend will be mean and angry towards you anyways, your superego might present your ego with a feeling of disdain or hatred or envy, and you might be tempted to take the food anyways. If the superego judges that the other person has a mental state/constitution that will be conducive to mutual cooperation, the superego will serve the ego with a feeling of deep affection and bonding, and you will not judge it wise to steal the food.
How does the ego become submissive to the superego, and how does the ego become infected with fear of the superego? I'm not quite sure, but perhaps it has something to do with:
1. The advent of transcendent Gods. Your superego tries to figure out this infinitely powerful member of your sociality (that could potentially inflict severe pain on you), and the superego can't figure this God out since this God is held to be transcendence and unknowable. And so the superego becomes infected with fear, and the ego looks to the superego for guidance, but receives none, except a vague feeling of fear, and the ego keeps on looking back on and on ever more urgently, but all it receives is a feeling of fear, and pretty soon the ego becomes obsessed with figuring out the source of this fear, and it becomes fixated on the superego???
(Whereas a superego might be able to cope with an anthropomorphic God with anthropomorphic finiteness and faults and personality and whatnot...and when it comes to animistic, quasi-mechanical Gods, maybe even the plain-old ego would be suited for it. At the worst, placating an animistic god with rituals would be like having the ego invent a game for itself: "Okay, this field won't produce a harvest unless I sacrifice a goat to this God...okay, now I've accomplished that, I feel satisfied, now we have the god's favor (and we think we know this with certainty because it is held to be an animistic/mechanical/quasi-naturalistic god), and it will just depend on the rain to see if we get a good harvest.")
2. Child-parent relationships. At first, the child's relationship to the parent is likely to be like the human's relationship to an incomprehensible god, so maybe a certain amount of chronic fear and suprego fixation is unavoidable at a certain age. But, assuming nothing traumatic happens, the child grows up to possess the hallmark of adulthood--a calm and collected superego that serves the ego, instead of a fearful ego that serves a fearful superego.
3. Powerful leaders/states/groups in human society. When leaders/groups become powerful enough, they can act with irrational impunity, leading to a situation that closely models the previous two examples.
These are just some ideas. I'm really not sure at all (well, I'm not sure about any of this, but especially this part).
BTW, I think #3 suggests the psychological basis for anarchism. It is possible that anarchism (along with atheism and non-patriarchical family relations) are essential for our mental well-being.
So is it possible that monotheistic, transcendental religion has been nothing more than the world's greatest method of ego-effort-redirection (redirecting our ego's efforts from serving our Id, to serving some superego or God or ruler or set of clergy, etc.)? Furthermore, a method that co-opted natural animistic/pagan impulses, as well as the superego, in order to distort these two potentially useful devices into a tool of ego-effort-redirection and exploitation?
Just think about how, in today's world,
instead of superego --> ego --> Id,
we have our egos choose to sabotage our Id with sleep depression, anorexia, monastic celibacy (less so nowadays), etc., all in order to serve the superego or some God or ruler, with very little if any benefit coming back to our Id in the end (and even if some does come back, our ego is not aware of it and so cannot take joy in it).
So the question becomes, how to get the superego serving the ego once again? I think a good start would be to interrogate the superego in terms of its instrumental usefulness to the ego every single time you feel an injuction from the superego that you "should" do something.
Superego: "You should pray to God daily."
Ego: "How does that serve me?"
Superego: "You're missing the point. You should love God just for goodness sake!"
Ego: "Sorry, I'm not going to do anything unless I can see how it at least indirectly serves my mission of serving the Id."
Superego: "Oh, fine...well, you see, God will make you burn in hell if you don't."
Ego: "Why would he do that? And how do I know he really exists?"
Superego: "The mind and substance of God is unknowable!"
Ego: "Well, sheesh, a lot of help you are...why am I even listening to you anyways if you can't do your job of translating to me, in a language and system of incentives and feelings that I can understand, what other entities are thinking and what it would be rational for me to do about it? I'm going to ignore you whenever you are not providing me with some comprehensible insight...but insofar as you explain yourself, I will take your explanations into account."
Most people currently have this idea that the superego is naturally irrational. I think a hijacked, obfuscated superego can be irrational, but an effective superego should at least make intuitive sense and also be able to be interrogated by the ego. In principle, the ego could find out everything about other people's mental states that the superego can, but it would take much longer for the ego's analytical, reductionist methods to come to any conclusions, whereas the superego can obtain reasonably accurate conclusions using shorthand rules-of-thumb (which are probably partly programmed from evolution and thus partly innate), as long as the superego is not used to address questions for which it is not suited, such as probing the mind of a transcendental God and taking account of that God's potential effects. This suggests that it is not useful or advisable to try to extend morality, which is a product of the superego, to encompass the transcendental and divine absolute. Rather, feelings of morality are to be heeded only when they apply to mundane interactions between people. And we should occasionally interrogate this morality with egoistic rationality, just to let our egos make sure that our superegos have not been supplying bat-shit-insane rules of thumb, or rules-of-thumb for social conduct that are horribly obsolete now that we have moved out of our recent evolutionary context (paleolithic clan living).
So, there are actually two distinct kinds of irrationality: Id-irrationality and superego-irrationality. (Or rather, we should speak of "Id-nonrationality," because the Id has no self-evaluation along that scale. It has its own, self-justifying, given logic that has to do with our innate drives that are, presumably unchanging from our birth--the most basic aspects of survival and reproduction).
So, declaring "I desire X (not instrumentally in order to achieve something else, but rather, directly, for its own sake)," such as food, water, sleep, etc...that is Id-nonrationality. Equally, "I do not desire X" (directly, not for instrumental reasons (if it's for instrumental reasons, then you know it's the ego that is saying that). This is the sort of irrationality or non-rationality that we might as well accept or even celebrate. So, if you are sexually aroused by men and you desire sex with them in a direct way, for its own sake, (not for instrumental, strategic, ego-driven reasons), well, that's your Id talking, so you might as well embrace that nonrational desire and set your ego to the task of figuring out how to fulfill it.
This is completely different than "I *should* desire X" or "I *should not* desire X. That's your superego talking. If we happen to interrogate this statement with our ego and find that it has no reason behind it, that it is irrational, then we would do well to discard the superego's advice in this circumstance and not allow ourselves to be troubled by its remonstrances. So we hear "I *should not* desire sex with men." Our ego asks itself, "Why? How would that harm me and my quest for gaining pleasure through serving my Id, which very much has a drive to have sex with men?" If the ego or superego can't respond with reasons, then this injuction must be discarded. A helpful superego would respond with, "Well, most other people in our society don't like homosexual sex. I mean, trust me, they reeeeeeeaaaaally don't like other people having homosexual sex, for various reasons, and they will do much harm to you (and thus prevent the Id from pursuing its other Drives) if you try it." The rational ego would then weigh these consequences, and either go ahead with the sex if it deemed the rewards greater than the risks, or if not, then possibly figure out some of the reasons why those people don't like homosexuals having sex, figure out of there's some way to change that (which would mean having another dialog with the superego and investigating its sense of morality). Or, if the ego recognized that there were other, more urgent Drives of the Id to satisfy, then the ego would set about on some new task and just drop the whole intention of having homosexual sex for the time being.
So, notice, aside from prohibiting things, the superego can equally say, "You *should* desire X." I think this is the heart of the problem that Zizek talks about, where the new psychological problem of post-modern capitalism is the superego injunction to "enjoy." No, "enjoying" will not feel enjoyable unless it is done as the ego serving the Id (rather than the ego serving the superego).
Perhaps this suggests the psychological basis of that feeling that we call "freedom." Perhaps it is the sensation of being able to cleverly and strategically exercise the full powers of one's ego (which is empowered, but not determined, by the superego's advice) in order to serve one's Id Drives.
Finally, I feel like I have resolved a philosophical issue that has been tormenting me for this whole school year. I was continually sensing an affinity for irrationality in some circumstances, but a complete opposite revulsion towards irrationality in other circumstances. I felt myself becoming rootless, not knowing how to operate---concluding to myself that ultra-rationality was the only advisable way, but at the same time practicing certain daily irrationalities out of habit and intuitive choice. Now I understand that there are some irrationalities that I can wholeheartedly pursue, that will not lead me astray from happiness, namely the Id-irrationalities, and that there are, indeed, irrationalities that will harm my happiness and that I would do well to resolve with my completely rational, egoistic ego (just as it normally should be).
So, love is irrational, right? But now I know that expressing "I love you" (as simply a gleeful expression, without any egoistic, manipulative, strategic, instrumental intent) is fine. Whereas, thinking "I know I *should* love you...but why don't I? What is wrong with me?" is problematic, unless the ego can find a very good instrumental reason for taking this attitude.
Likewise, irrational organicism that one directly feels and pursues is fine. (Example: "I feel a direct (non-instrumental) Drive or desire to immerse myself in the organic wholesomeness of the outdoor beauty of the Ozarks.") Organicism that one seeks for instrumental, egoistic reasons could also be fine, so long as this is rational organicism. (Example: "Going 'back to the Land in my Heimat, the Ozarks, will clear my mind, improve my eating habits and health, and help me finish this research paper, which in turn will help me serve my Id's Drives by getting me a future job, future employment, and money"). Whereas irrational organicism that one feels a superego injunction to possess, or irrational organicism that has irrational moral implications, will be problematic. (Example: "I should feel love for my Ozark Heimat, and so should all others, or else they are untermensch and should be killed.")
===================
Ah, if only we were still forced to hunt wild deer for food in order to survive, we could know the true satisfaction of satisfying our hunger thanks to the brilliant cleverness of our rational ego.
(Whereas modern deer hunting is a type of game where our ego has to trick itself into thinking that this hunting is actually necessary to obtain the meat...even when done with bow-and-arrow...actually, especially when done with bow-and-arrow, because that requires the added self-trickery of imagining that one doesn't have any better tools that one could use. At least when you use a rifle, you are being honest to yourself about that...although the sport or gamesmanship of it is lessened because of that. Really, the more you try to go back to that primitive life, the more of a game of self-trickery it is. That's another reason why I really wonder about the efficacy of "going back to the land" with some sort of commune or something. Unless we could make it productive in a practical way, I fear that we'd always have this nagging feeling in us that the only reason we were able to do this is because we live in an industrial society of abundance, and that our happiness didn't really depend on our efforts on the land, and that we could leave it any time we wanted, such that it would take self-trickery to convince ourselves that it was a meaningful endeavor. Don't get me wrong, it would indeed be pleasant. But it would also need to require the cleverness and constructiveness of our egos in order to be really satisfying. Perhaps fixing up a house would fulfill that requirement.
Even so, there's no way to really go back to that primitive, precarious, troubled, and yet acutely satisfying way of life (living off the fruits of a farm and not begrudging it with the thought that you could be doing all these other things in the city) without doing away with modern society entirely, and I do not think that would be worth it. I continue to hold out hope that we can find additional ways of satisfying our egos in modern, industrial, information society. We just need to make a few modifications to our lifestyles, our culture, and our political and social systems.)
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Cat Stevens = the ultimate incarnation of Unitarian Universalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o26nu7NN8w
See what I mean?
See what I mean?
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Laibach and why Nazi Nudity is possible
To get a sense of the genius of Laibach, first, watch the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGikhmjTSZI
And then this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbB1s7TZUQk
Isn't that hilarious? But seriously, watch out whenever you encounter any sort of attempted aestheticization of politics. A lot can be accomplished with the proper aesthetics if one is thinking on the emotional/organicist level, and not on the French Enlightenment/rational/mechanistic/egoistic level. I ran across the second video before seeing the first and realizing that it was a parody, and even I was kind of gripped by it, even though I knew what it was trying to do. But once you get the parody aspect of it, it seems really silly and over the top. ("Life is life!" is a very simple, infantile, fascist type of cliche in the first place...what is that even supposed to mean? It's not supposed to mean anything. The aesthetics are supposed to do the thinking for you, not your logical mind). Heh, and all they needed to do was tweak the lyrics and the instruments (even the musical notes are the same--the Wagnerian trumpets are playing the same "Na na, nana na" from the original without the swung beats).
By the way, this parody also shows how Nazi nudity is possible. Ever wonder why figures in the nude are sometimes portrayed in Nazi art? It's because it's pure organicism. As long as the nudity is portrayed in a "healthy" way signifying strength and primitive "Blut und Boden" familial/national warmth, and not in a transgressive or rebellious way, then nudity is perfectly amenable to Nazism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHABythIf20
These are all scenes from Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia." Apparently Rammstein picked up on the odd fact of the nudity in this Nazi film. Also, is this a fascist song? Probably. It's pretty organicist. Is Rammstein a fascist band? I don't think so. Even more, I don't think that's the relevant question to ask. I think they are, as Slavoj Zizek has said about Laibach, a big question mark on stage, not posing as any sort of answer, but poking us with questions about fascism and revealing, if anything, how fascism works, the types of images that it uses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBjlywzPHs
=================
For more evidence of why Laibach is genius, watch this documentary with Slavoj Zizek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU0sPdhcxhg
=================
Here's another way to understand Nazi nudity and organicism: as a way of recognizing everyone's innate admiration for nude bodies, and then channeling that into a safe significance, just as Catholicism tries to channel everyone's innate desire to have sex into a safe form with a safe significance. For example:
Pure organicism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SvjSu4R-8
This is why organicism is dangerous. This is why there can be no compromise with organicism. My rational mind recognizes:
1. The manipulative Orwellian tactic of repeating a trivially true statement ("Life is life"), endowing that statement with huge significance, and then implying that the statement proves one's larger, but slightly unrelated point.
2. Notice the nude female archer. Notice the strength. This is how Nazi ideology could seem liberating to girls. Yes, behind the scenes the petulant establishmentism was re-iterating: "Kind, Kirche, Kuche," but on the surface it was saying, "You girls have a glorious place in our new society, a place of strength and honor and respect, just like the men have always had. We are elevating you to the status of equals, blah blah blah."
My rational mind realizes that these images, when taken at face value (which I'm not even sure is intended...the music video gets so over the top with the fascist nonsense that it is almost silly at times, such that I have to wonder if this is a very subtle satire of fascism, in fact), are manipulative.
But my emotional mind says..."LIFE IS LIFE."
Should I integrate this emotional mind into my political calculus? Or should I brutally interrogate and discipline this wayward emotional mind?
Communists and fascists can craft equally compelling mythologies and imagery when it comes to appealing to one's emotions. Fighting on this terrain is fighting with even odds at best.
Communists can craft rational self-interested justifications for itself (when concerning workers and not owners, of course) much better than fascism can. Fighting on this terrain gives communism much better odds than fascism. This is the terrain on which we must fight.
This is why I seriously doubt the argument that Saul Alinsky and others have put forward that we need to address people starting from where they are operating already. If their existing perspective is an organicist one, then we are fucked, and we will be fighting with even odds at best until we can change the methodology, the terrain. Besides, is it realistic to expect a build-up of revolutionary momentum without a transformation in fundamental perspectives? Haven't such shifts accompanied all world-historical revolutionary transformations? No, I'd focus on changing people's methodology first. Then we can get down to the bread-and-butter of figuring out what we want and what we need to do to get it.
==============
Other examples of Nazi nudity (obviously NSFW):
http://www.usmbooks.com/nazi_nude_photography.html
http://www.usmbooks.com/nazi_nudes_book.html
http://flickr.com/photos/29327835@N08/sets/72157607408769776/?page=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
And then this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Isn't that hilarious? But seriously, watch out whenever you encounter any sort of attempted aestheticization of politics. A lot can be accomplished with the proper aesthetics if one is thinking on the emotional/organicist level, and not on the French Enlightenment/rational/mechani
By the way, this parody also shows how Nazi nudity is possible. Ever wonder why figures in the nude are sometimes portrayed in Nazi art? It's because it's pure organicism. As long as the nudity is portrayed in a "healthy" way signifying strength and primitive "Blut und Boden" familial/national warmth, and not in a transgressive or rebellious way, then nudity is perfectly amenable to Nazism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
These are all scenes from Leni Riefenstahl's "Olympia." Apparently Rammstein picked up on the odd fact of the nudity in this Nazi film. Also, is this a fascist song? Probably. It's pretty organicist. Is Rammstein a fascist band? I don't think so. Even more, I don't think that's the relevant question to ask. I think they are, as Slavoj Zizek has said about Laibach, a big question mark on stage, not posing as any sort of answer, but poking us with questions about fascism and revealing, if anything, how fascism works, the types of images that it uses.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
=================
For more evidence of why Laibach is genius, watch this documentary with Slavoj Zizek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU0sPdhcxhg
=================
Here's another way to understand Nazi nudity and organicism: as a way of recognizing everyone's innate admiration for nude bodies, and then channeling that into a safe significance, just as Catholicism tries to channel everyone's innate desire to have sex into a safe form with a safe significance. For example:
Pure organicism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This is why organicism is dangerous. This is why there can be no compromise with organicism. My rational mind recognizes:
1. The manipulative Orwellian tactic of repeating a trivially true statement ("Life is life"), endowing that statement with huge significance, and then implying that the statement proves one's larger, but slightly unrelated point.
2. Notice the nude female archer. Notice the strength. This is how Nazi ideology could seem liberating to girls. Yes, behind the scenes the petulant establishmentism was re-iterating: "Kind, Kirche, Kuche," but on the surface it was saying, "You girls have a glorious place in our new society, a place of strength and honor and respect, just like the men have always had. We are elevating you to the status of equals, blah blah blah."
My rational mind realizes that these images, when taken at face value (which I'm not even sure is intended...the music video gets so over the top with the fascist nonsense that it is almost silly at times, such that I have to wonder if this is a very subtle satire of fascism, in fact), are manipulative.
But my emotional mind says..."LIFE IS LIFE."
Should I integrate this emotional mind into my political calculus? Or should I brutally interrogate and discipline this wayward emotional mind?
Communists and fascists can craft equally compelling mythologies and imagery when it comes to appealing to one's emotions. Fighting on this terrain is fighting with even odds at best.
Communists can craft rational self-interested justifications for itself (when concerning workers and not owners, of course) much better than fascism can. Fighting on this terrain gives communism much better odds than fascism. This is the terrain on which we must fight.
This is why I seriously doubt the argument that Saul Alinsky and others have put forward that we need to address people starting from where they are operating already. If their existing perspective is an organicist one, then we are fucked, and we will be fighting with even odds at best until we can change the methodology, the terrain. Besides, is it realistic to expect a build-up of revolutionary momentum without a transformation in fundamental perspectives? Haven't such shifts accompanied all world-historical revolutionary transformations? No, I'd focus on changing people's methodology first. Then we can get down to the bread-and-butter of figuring out what we want and what we need to do to get it.
==============
Other examples of Nazi nudity (obviously NSFW):
http://www.usmbooks.com/nazi_
http://www.usmbooks.com/nazi_
http://flickr.com/photos/
80s Music = Materialist Romanticism
Note: some of the links to youtube videos may have expired, as videos get taken down and whatnot. If you search for the songs again, you can probably always find new copies.
==============================
I've always been grasping to define that quality that makes "80s" music distinctive. Now, the reason I put "80s" music in quotes is because by "80s" music we mean white, middle-class 80s music. There were many other types of prominent 80s music (for example, hip-hop, hard rock & metal...which corresponded, roughly, to working-class blacks and working-class whites, respectively), so it is interesting in and of itself that white middle-class 80s music was able to get itself defined as the flagship for "80s" music.
(BTW, this is kinda how my vulgar Marxist mind might approach music in America:
*Pre-1950s: Jazz: middle-class blacks and white adults. Other orchestral/big band dancing music and classical music: middle-class and bourgeois white adults.
*1950s: Rock & Roll: extension of music to middle-class white youth.
*1960s: Motown: extension of music to middle-class black youth. "60s" hippie music: more music for middle-class white youth, especially for disillusioned middle-class white youth.
*1970s: Funk: music for middle-class and working class black adults. Disco: music for middle-class white adults. Hard rock, southern rock, classic rock (Alice Cooper, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston, respectively): music for middle-class and working class whites, both youth and adults. Singers & songwriters music: music for middle-class and working-class adult whites who feel lost and disillusioned amid the turbulent, increasingly-materialistic
==============================
I've always been grasping to define that quality that makes "80s" music distinctive. Now, the reason I put "80s" music in quotes is because by "80s" music we mean white, middle-class 80s music. There were many other types of prominent 80s music (for example, hip-hop, hard rock & metal...which corresponded, roughly, to working-class blacks and working-class whites, respectively), so it is interesting in and of itself that white middle-class 80s music was able to get itself defined as the flagship for "80s" music.
(BTW, this is kinda how my vulgar Marxist mind might approach music in America:
*Pre-1950s: Jazz: middle-class blacks and white adults. Other orchestral/big band dancing music and classical music: middle-class and bourgeois white adults.
*1950s: Rock & Roll: extension of music to middle-class white youth.
*1960s: Motown: extension of music to middle-class black youth. "60s" hippie music: more music for middle-class white youth, especially for disillusioned middle-class white youth.
*1970s: Funk: music for middle-class and working class black adults. Disco: music for middle-class white adults. Hard rock, southern rock, classic rock (Alice Cooper, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston, respectively): music for middle-class and working class whites, both youth and adults. Singers & songwriters music: music for middle-class and working-class adult whites who feel lost and disillusioned amid the turbulent, increasingly-materialistic
'70s.
*1980s: hip-hop: extension of music to working-class black youth. Hard rock & metal: working-class white youth. "80s" pop: middle-class white youth.
So only by the late 1980s do we have music for everyone in America. This is mirrored in TV programming. Until the early '70s, there wasn't any programming for blacks that featured blacks at all. Then there were some shows illustrating the lives of middle-class black families. Only maybe in the '90s were working-class black characters acceptable (as with working-class white characters...such as Roseanne, which was a landmark show).
At the point of the late 1980s, the music styles of the different ethnic groups and classes were the most dissimilar. Since then, the music styles and viewerships have come closer together. (Consider techno: a white middle-class musical taste, which is also heavily influenced by rap in its "house music" form. Or the likes of Eminem.)
Part 2:
Okay, now back to 80s music as materialist romanticism.
Basically, it's romanticism, that much is obvious. But it's distinctive from any previous romanticism in that it is not organicist, not supernatural, but entirely "instrumental" (in a philosophical sense) and materialist. It is the white middle-class hopes and optimism of the Reagan years distilled into sound. It appears to them that finally the tide in the class struggle is turning, as well as the tide in the inter-imperialist struggle with the Soviet Union. The civil rights struggle has stabilized. Blacks have been decimated by drugs (some pumped in by the CIA, of course) and gangs, gays are being punished with AIDS, and finally we can return to the 1950s...except not quite. We are less innocent now. Life is more stressful. Maintaining status is more difficult. But we can use music to affirm our white middle-class lives, our oh-so tortured and deep and complex social lives (stressful because they revolve around status and material success so much) and emotions that are so worthy of respect and contemplation, etc. That's what 80s music is all about. White, middle-class materialistic romanticism.
Now I give you about a dozen case studies....
Part 3:
I'll start with by far the best example:
Human League -- Don't You Want Me Baby?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arUqoKjU3D4
This is the materialist romanticism unmasked. The newfound affluence displayed, the pride in it, the anxiety over status, the naked social power politics, the effeminate male (tortured by his middle-class anxieties ("Oh, poor me, life is so difficult and complicated for me, who are other social classes to complain? etc.). And yet it's still romanticist, somehow, oddly enough. The shadowy assassins. The ghoulish male. The darkness and mystery. The blond, clean-shaven young guy in the car at 43 seconds is classic 80s: strong face, blazing, full of power and mystery and mission.
Uptown Girl -- Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F-nt7aC_JQ
Again, pretty obvious. Status, material success, bagging a supermodel woman from the upper class, not because you really "love" her, obviously, but as a point of pride and as a ladder to success (although the word "love" is, of course, still used...and the corniness. Not realistic at all, still totally romanticist, in the style of an ole-time, seemingly innocent musical. That's why these 80s music videos are so insidious and dishonest. They can claim to not be talking about crass power and social status and other materialist things and whatnot thanks to the veneer of innocent whimsical or romantic style, but there's always cold, calculating, mechanistic, capitalist self-interest being expressed underneath).
By the way, this is the classic 80s girl: tall, blond, curiously Aryan and masculine in her chin and collar bone. I still haven't figured this one out, but this type of woman is ubiquitous whenever the ideal woman comes up in an 80s video.
Sweet Dreams -- Eurhythmics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQHrspjw4aA
This is the counter-attack against the naked, calculating, capitalist self-interest being expressed under the veneer of romanticism. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. The ghoulish, tortured romanticist imagery, while admittedly exposing the deceit of other 80s pop-culture, also happens to reinforce another theme of white middle-class 80s music: the "white middle-class life is so tortured and difficult, oh have sympathy for us, empathize with us, we are just hard-striving (not hard-working, hard-striving...in the sense of anxious ambition, not diligent work) people."
Oh, forgot to mention...about Uptown Girl...did you notice the stereotypical black driver? Hmmm, I wonder, WTF is that supposed to suggest?
To continue with the emo "Oh-poor-me" theme of 80s music, I give you:
I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight --- Cutting Crew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmR65FHcJ6s
The name of the band says it all.
This is also a good example of the "personalization" of politics. This is the vague notion that there are no real political problems in society, and that our primary problems in life are personal problems, not socio-political problems. Or, rather, it is the intense anguish and attention towards personal problems that obscures consciousness of socio-political problems in oneself and others.
Also, that last video was totally romanticist. All of the mysterious imagery, the skinny and pale women looking sad and dejected, the cold atmosphere of the colors, etc.
Also, the problems of dealing with the material culture of the 80s: drugs and whatnot. Clearly materialist as well.
One more example of both the "Oh-poor-me" theme and the "personalization of politics" theme:
Living on a Prayer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE11Zrrp24I
Despite the religious diction, this song is entirely focused on maintaining the worldly material well-being of the characters. "We gotta hold on to what we got..." "We're halfway there!" As if to say, "Another 15 years, and we'll have our second mortgage paid off, honey, and then we'll have achieved SUCCESS!!!!"
Also note the dig at the unions. In this song, unions are outside forces that prey upon your making a living, rather than self-generated and self-directed tools of liberation.
Also, "She brings home her pay for love...for love." A capitalist exchange. Materialist, calculating, yet they managed to make it seem romanticist at the same time.
Also, personalization of politics, in that "It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not. We got each other, and that's a lot." Yes, suddenly love will triumph over all. Hmmm...will this love put food on the dinner table? Very romanticist. Also, "Take my hand, and we'll make it I swear." In other words, there are no social/political causes for your misery. It's your own fault, and the only way to overcome it is to work harder and rely on your personal life.
Now to a different theme of white middle-class 80s music:
We didn't start the fire -- Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKu2QaytmrM
Civil rights discrimination? U.S. imperialism? Consumer abuse? NOT OUR FAULT!
Also, this is the antithesis of historical understanding. In this framework, everything changes, but nothing ever really changes. The superficial names and events and fashions change, but the fire just keeps on burning, and you can't put it out. These fundamental problems are just a part of our nature, no use in expecting to change them, just "do the best you can," or rather, don't do anything, or even reinforce the problems, but then retroactively say that you did the best you could. Revolution doesn't happen in this universe.
Also, showing the family life is only showing half of history. You could show a family kitchen of a loyal Nazi family in the Third Reich over the years, and it would still look just as playful and charming and harmless and full of good-natured family mirth and whatnot. Also, by portraying the 60s rebelliousness and whatnot as just a natural phase, it denudes it of political significance even more.
Also, notice the sleek austerity of the home in the 80s? It's a romanticist piece of imagery that conveys more of the "Oh-poor-me, life just isn't the same for the white middle-class people like us as it used to be" theme.
In a similar vein...
Toto -- Africa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPT_3PEjnsE
1. Religious words. Romanticism.
2. Ole-time European exoticism towards Africa:
"Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies"
"The wild dogs cry out in the night"
"I seek to cure whats deep inside, frightened of this thing that Ive become"
---this last line is almost straight out of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
3. Romanticist desire to experience that wonder and excitement of discovering and mastering Africa for the first time once again
"Its gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Theres nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do"
---Now, of course, he's partly talking about a girl. But the "hundred men" line just echoes too much of the old European romantic conceit of mastering a whole continent with 100 men or so. But, this time it's different because...
4. "I bless the rains down in africa"
"I know that I must do whats right
Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti"
---So this time we will approach Africa from a benevolent standpoint. We promise. We're good guys this time. We really have good intentions. Puh-leaze. Get off your while middle-class liberal high horse. (And thus the "Save-Darfur" liberal hypocrites who are the types to call for U.S. intervention were born. (Of course, not all "Save Darfur" people are interventionist.)
Also, in the video...obviously more exoticism. Searching for the page that's missing the mysterious page fragment. The mysterious black woman. The lion's head. And then the angry native comes with the spear and ruins it all. The fire symbolizes the passing away of the Africa that the Europeans knew and loved so well. Oh...those were the days, when benevolent colonialism ruled, and when Africa was our exotic playground...
By the way, did you notice in the "We didn't start the fire" video that there was a picture of a slave bound in ropes, and then the famous picture of the Vietcong being assassinated? Oh, but we're not responsible for that. Those were just regrettable things, handed down from the past, nothing we could do about them, the fire just kept on burning.....puh-leaze.
Additional thoughts on Toto's Africa:
*Notice the very serious, alarmed, deadpan face of the main singer when the native throws the spear.
*Also, we never actually see the face of the native. The native spear-thrower is a faceless force. No human identity associated there.
*The juxtaposition of the dreary modern world ("12:30 flight") with the exotic allure of Africa. "Hurry there, she's waiting there for you!" could refer to the girl or to Africa, or both.
Also, in case you are thinking that I am making a big deal out of nothing, I've actually heard conservatives apologize for America's past shortcomings (slavery, etc.) by saying, with an obvious nod to the song, "You know, we didn't start the fire." This idea is now firmly entrenched in our culture.
Modern knight-in-shining-armor...
*1980s: hip-hop: extension of music to working-class black youth. Hard rock & metal: working-class white youth. "80s" pop: middle-class white youth.
So only by the late 1980s do we have music for everyone in America. This is mirrored in TV programming. Until the early '70s, there wasn't any programming for blacks that featured blacks at all. Then there were some shows illustrating the lives of middle-class black families. Only maybe in the '90s were working-class black characters acceptable (as with working-class white characters...such as Roseanne, which was a landmark show).
At the point of the late 1980s, the music styles of the different ethnic groups and classes were the most dissimilar. Since then, the music styles and viewerships have come closer together. (Consider techno: a white middle-class musical taste, which is also heavily influenced by rap in its "house music" form. Or the likes of Eminem.)
Part 2:
Okay, now back to 80s music as materialist romanticism.
Basically, it's romanticism, that much is obvious. But it's distinctive from any previous romanticism in that it is not organicist, not supernatural, but entirely "instrumental" (in a philosophical sense) and materialist. It is the white middle-class hopes and optimism of the Reagan years distilled into sound. It appears to them that finally the tide in the class struggle is turning, as well as the tide in the inter-imperialist struggle with the Soviet Union. The civil rights struggle has stabilized. Blacks have been decimated by drugs (some pumped in by the CIA, of course) and gangs, gays are being punished with AIDS, and finally we can return to the 1950s...except not quite. We are less innocent now. Life is more stressful. Maintaining status is more difficult. But we can use music to affirm our white middle-class lives, our oh-so tortured and deep and complex social lives (stressful because they revolve around status and material success so much) and emotions that are so worthy of respect and contemplation, etc. That's what 80s music is all about. White, middle-class materialistic romanticism.
Now I give you about a dozen case studies....
Part 3:
I'll start with by far the best example:
Human League -- Don't You Want Me Baby?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This is the materialist romanticism unmasked. The newfound affluence displayed, the pride in it, the anxiety over status, the naked social power politics, the effeminate male (tortured by his middle-class anxieties ("Oh, poor me, life is so difficult and complicated for me, who are other social classes to complain? etc.). And yet it's still romanticist, somehow, oddly enough. The shadowy assassins. The ghoulish male. The darkness and mystery. The blond, clean-shaven young guy in the car at 43 seconds is classic 80s: strong face, blazing, full of power and mystery and mission.
Uptown Girl -- Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Again, pretty obvious. Status, material success, bagging a supermodel woman from the upper class, not because you really "love" her, obviously, but as a point of pride and as a ladder to success (although the word "love" is, of course, still used...and the corniness. Not realistic at all, still totally romanticist, in the style of an ole-time, seemingly innocent musical. That's why these 80s music videos are so insidious and dishonest. They can claim to not be talking about crass power and social status and other materialist things and whatnot thanks to the veneer of innocent whimsical or romantic style, but there's always cold, calculating, mechanistic, capitalist self-interest being expressed underneath).
By the way, this is the classic 80s girl: tall, blond, curiously Aryan and masculine in her chin and collar bone. I still haven't figured this one out, but this type of woman is ubiquitous whenever the ideal woman comes up in an 80s video.
Sweet Dreams -- Eurhythmics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This is the counter-attack against the naked, calculating, capitalist self-interest being expressed under the veneer of romanticism. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. The ghoulish, tortured romanticist imagery, while admittedly exposing the deceit of other 80s pop-culture, also happens to reinforce another theme of white middle-class 80s music: the "white middle-class life is so tortured and difficult, oh have sympathy for us, empathize with us, we are just hard-striving (not hard-working, hard-striving...in the sense of anxious ambition, not diligent work) people."
Oh, forgot to mention...about Uptown Girl...did you notice the stereotypical black driver? Hmmm, I wonder, WTF is that supposed to suggest?
To continue with the emo "Oh-poor-me" theme of 80s music, I give you:
I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight --- Cutting Crew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
The name of the band says it all.
This is also a good example of the "personalization" of politics. This is the vague notion that there are no real political problems in society, and that our primary problems in life are personal problems, not socio-political problems. Or, rather, it is the intense anguish and attention towards personal problems that obscures consciousness of socio-political problems in oneself and others.
Also, that last video was totally romanticist. All of the mysterious imagery, the skinny and pale women looking sad and dejected, the cold atmosphere of the colors, etc.
Also, the problems of dealing with the material culture of the 80s: drugs and whatnot. Clearly materialist as well.
One more example of both the "Oh-poor-me" theme and the "personalization of politics" theme:
Living on a Prayer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Despite the religious diction, this song is entirely focused on maintaining the worldly material well-being of the characters. "We gotta hold on to what we got..." "We're halfway there!" As if to say, "Another 15 years, and we'll have our second mortgage paid off, honey, and then we'll have achieved SUCCESS!!!!"
Also note the dig at the unions. In this song, unions are outside forces that prey upon your making a living, rather than self-generated and self-directed tools of liberation.
Also, "She brings home her pay for love...for love." A capitalist exchange. Materialist, calculating, yet they managed to make it seem romanticist at the same time.
Also, personalization of politics, in that "It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not. We got each other, and that's a lot." Yes, suddenly love will triumph over all. Hmmm...will this love put food on the dinner table? Very romanticist. Also, "Take my hand, and we'll make it I swear." In other words, there are no social/political causes for your misery. It's your own fault, and the only way to overcome it is to work harder and rely on your personal life.
Now to a different theme of white middle-class 80s music:
We didn't start the fire -- Billy Joel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Civil rights discrimination? U.S. imperialism? Consumer abuse? NOT OUR FAULT!
Also, this is the antithesis of historical understanding. In this framework, everything changes, but nothing ever really changes. The superficial names and events and fashions change, but the fire just keeps on burning, and you can't put it out. These fundamental problems are just a part of our nature, no use in expecting to change them, just "do the best you can," or rather, don't do anything, or even reinforce the problems, but then retroactively say that you did the best you could. Revolution doesn't happen in this universe.
Also, showing the family life is only showing half of history. You could show a family kitchen of a loyal Nazi family in the Third Reich over the years, and it would still look just as playful and charming and harmless and full of good-natured family mirth and whatnot. Also, by portraying the 60s rebelliousness and whatnot as just a natural phase, it denudes it of political significance even more.
Also, notice the sleek austerity of the home in the 80s? It's a romanticist piece of imagery that conveys more of the "Oh-poor-me, life just isn't the same for the white middle-class people like us as it used to be" theme.
In a similar vein...
Toto -- Africa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
1. Religious words. Romanticism.
2. Ole-time European exoticism towards Africa:
"Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies"
"The wild dogs cry out in the night"
"I seek to cure whats deep inside, frightened of this thing that Ive become"
---this last line is almost straight out of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
3. Romanticist desire to experience that wonder and excitement of discovering and mastering Africa for the first time once again
"Its gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
Theres nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do"
---Now, of course, he's partly talking about a girl. But the "hundred men" line just echoes too much of the old European romantic conceit of mastering a whole continent with 100 men or so. But, this time it's different because...
4. "I bless the rains down in africa"
"I know that I must do whats right
Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti"
---So this time we will approach Africa from a benevolent standpoint. We promise. We're good guys this time. We really have good intentions. Puh-leaze. Get off your while middle-class liberal high horse. (And thus the "Save-Darfur" liberal hypocrites who are the types to call for U.S. intervention were born. (Of course, not all "Save Darfur" people are interventionist.)
Also, in the video...obviously more exoticism. Searching for the page that's missing the mysterious page fragment. The mysterious black woman. The lion's head. And then the angry native comes with the spear and ruins it all. The fire symbolizes the passing away of the Africa that the Europeans knew and loved so well. Oh...those were the days, when benevolent colonialism ruled, and when Africa was our exotic playground...
By the way, did you notice in the "We didn't start the fire" video that there was a picture of a slave bound in ropes, and then the famous picture of the Vietcong being assassinated? Oh, but we're not responsible for that. Those were just regrettable things, handed down from the past, nothing we could do about them, the fire just kept on burning.....puh-leaze.
Additional thoughts on Toto's Africa:
*Notice the very serious, alarmed, deadpan face of the main singer when the native throws the spear.
*Also, we never actually see the face of the native. The native spear-thrower is a faceless force. No human identity associated there.
*The juxtaposition of the dreary modern world ("12:30 flight") with the exotic allure of Africa. "Hurry there, she's waiting there for you!" could refer to the girl or to Africa, or both.
Also, in case you are thinking that I am making a big deal out of nothing, I've actually heard conservatives apologize for America's past shortcomings (slavery, etc.) by saying, with an obvious nod to the song, "You know, we didn't start the fire." This idea is now firmly entrenched in our culture.
Modern knight-in-shining-armor...
.
A-Ha -- Take On Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzUD7FKcBk
This modern knight-in-shining-armor is a pretty boy, sensitive, but still courageous, and has bourgeois style in his hair and clothing to boot.
Heaven is a place on earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQahvFdQVu8
Here's some romanticist princess imagery. All throughout, of course, there's still the implicit assumption that Mr. Right is a white, middle-class guy with prospects, even if it is not stated as clearly here as in "Don't You Want Me," for instance. I mean, can you imagine this song, with the girl dancing like a princess with a guy, and then a shot of the guy revealing that he is actually a black man wearing a New York Yankees t-shirt?
Anyways, the princess trope was also common in the Disney movies around this time. Whereas now, not so much....keep this in mind for when I get to talking about present-day materialist realism and Avril Lavigne.
Also, the lyrics to this song are telling..."We'll make heaven on a place on earth." So, we are striving for love and heaven, so it's romanticist. But we are doing it not in a religious sense, but in a plainly materialist, worldly sense.
Again, notice the slightly Aryan features of the girl in this video. She has that strong chin, strong eyebrows, that blond, bland look to her that, for example, most MSU girls have as well. You know what I'm talking about, right? That done-up, conformist, highlighted-hair, bronzed-tan look.
Finally, sentimental 1950s nostalgia:
Dance Hall Days -- Wang Chung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKwO1aB1W3I
First notice the black-and-white intro, the mist, the mystery. The sense of manipulating time.
Then the gently patriarchal (although sometimes rather strange) lyrics. "Take your baby by the..."
Also notice the guy at 1:26. He looks like the guy in "Don't You Want Me." Same sort of features.
"When I, you, and everyone we knew...share in what was true." Ah, the pure innocence of the good ol' days. "You need her and she needs you." Very romantic. But there's still that materialist assumption beneath the surface. After all, why else does this song need to be so sentimental and...almost sad? It's because they realize that they cannot recreate the '50s. Society is too nakedly materialistic and calculating now. Not enough chivalry still present. So they can only reminisce...
The last gasps of materialist romanticism and the transition to materialist realism...
Run Away -- Real McCoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNIK5B9jNgE
What are they running away from? The nakedly self-interested materialist society. Notice the guy says:
"Money, sex, in full control, a generation without soul,
Perfect people in a perfect world, behind closed doors all in control,
Life, in a world of luxury, cold cash money mentality,
You gotta keep the faith, you gotta keep the faith,
You better keep the faith and run away."
Keep the faith---meaning, don't let go of the romanticism. Keep the illusion of a gentler, more forgiving, more inspiring dream.
All that she wants --- Ace of Base
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aom_Vvsmg7I
I'll Stand By You --- The Pretenders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5pECaW-VMI
Here materialist romanticism makes it to the working class. Here's a working-class couple (with a strong woman, not a princess) who are dealing with real problems of society, real material problems of drugs, financial hardship, etc., but still taking a romantic view of it, and perhaps a somewhat "personalist" view of it as well (in other words, we can solve all political problems by being faithful lovers, etc.) Nevertheless, I love this song because
1. I think that woman is so achingly attractive. Yeah, I guess I like the pale and wiry meth-head type. Honestly, I always thought Alison Cruze was actually pretty attractive.
2. It extends the materialist romanticist idea to the working class. Curious, isn't it, that this whole perspective falls off the radar just as this happens...
3. Also, I used to hear this song all the time in the car when I was a kid. Reminds me of childhood.
Materialist realism --- the present day.
Avril Lavigne -- Girlfriend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI
"...delicious...addictive.
A-Ha -- Take On Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
This modern knight-in-shining-armor is a pretty boy, sensitive, but still courageous, and has bourgeois style in his hair and clothing to boot.
Heaven is a place on earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Here's some romanticist princess imagery. All throughout, of course, there's still the implicit assumption that Mr. Right is a white, middle-class guy with prospects, even if it is not stated as clearly here as in "Don't You Want Me," for instance. I mean, can you imagine this song, with the girl dancing like a princess with a guy, and then a shot of the guy revealing that he is actually a black man wearing a New York Yankees t-shirt?
Anyways, the princess trope was also common in the Disney movies around this time. Whereas now, not so much....keep this in mind for when I get to talking about present-day materialist realism and Avril Lavigne.
Also, the lyrics to this song are telling..."We'll make heaven on a place on earth." So, we are striving for love and heaven, so it's romanticist. But we are doing it not in a religious sense, but in a plainly materialist, worldly sense.
Again, notice the slightly Aryan features of the girl in this video. She has that strong chin, strong eyebrows, that blond, bland look to her that, for example, most MSU girls have as well. You know what I'm talking about, right? That done-up, conformist, highlighted-hair, bronzed-tan look.
Finally, sentimental 1950s nostalgia:
Dance Hall Days -- Wang Chung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
First notice the black-and-white intro, the mist, the mystery. The sense of manipulating time.
Then the gently patriarchal (although sometimes rather strange) lyrics. "Take your baby by the..."
Also notice the guy at 1:26. He looks like the guy in "Don't You Want Me." Same sort of features.
"When I, you, and everyone we knew...share in what was true." Ah, the pure innocence of the good ol' days. "You need her and she needs you." Very romantic. But there's still that materialist assumption beneath the surface. After all, why else does this song need to be so sentimental and...almost sad? It's because they realize that they cannot recreate the '50s. Society is too nakedly materialistic and calculating now. Not enough chivalry still present. So they can only reminisce...
The last gasps of materialist romanticism and the transition to materialist realism...
Run Away -- Real McCoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
What are they running away from? The nakedly self-interested materialist society. Notice the guy says:
"Money, sex, in full control, a generation without soul,
Perfect people in a perfect world, behind closed doors all in control,
Life, in a world of luxury, cold cash money mentality,
You gotta keep the faith, you gotta keep the faith,
You better keep the faith and run away."
Keep the faith---meaning, don't let go of the romanticism. Keep the illusion of a gentler, more forgiving, more inspiring dream.
All that she wants --- Ace of Base
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
I'll Stand By You --- The Pretenders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Here materialist romanticism makes it to the working class. Here's a working-class couple (with a strong woman, not a princess) who are dealing with real problems of society, real material problems of drugs, financial hardship, etc., but still taking a romantic view of it, and perhaps a somewhat "personalist" view of it as well (in other words, we can solve all political problems by being faithful lovers, etc.) Nevertheless, I love this song because
1. I think that woman is so achingly attractive. Yeah, I guess I like the pale and wiry meth-head type. Honestly, I always thought Alison Cruze was actually pretty attractive.
2. It extends the materialist romanticist idea to the working class. Curious, isn't it, that this whole perspective falls off the radar just as this happens...
3. Also, I used to hear this song all the time in the car when I was a kid. Reminds me of childhood.
Materialist realism --- the present day.
Avril Lavigne -- Girlfriend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
"...delicious...addictive.
.." ---Here's a girl comparing herself to a food or a substance.
"Hell yeah, I'm the muthafuckin' princess!" ---Here's a girl sarcastically comparing herself to a princess, disparaging that ideal that, in the 80s, formed the romanticist core of a lot of songs. Also note how Disney films have gone away from that royal romanticist plot line (Snow White, The Lion King, Aladdin, The Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Anastasia, Pocahontas, that movie with the two dogs eating the same spaghetti noodle, etc.), towards more scientific, materialist-rooted movies (A Bug's Life, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Wall-E, etc.) Although the industrial, turn-of-the-century London intro sequence survives, as you hilariously pointed out at the beginning of Wall-E.
"You know what I can do to make you feel alright." ---Naked emphasis on pure sensory pleasure. Pure self-interested hedonism, lacking any sort of romanticist mask.
"I'll have you wrapped around my finger...because I can do it better."
The self-interested power relations, the social competition, the status-seeking, the gossiping...all out in the open. Well, at least it is all more honest this way.
Also note how the naive, romantic love of the redhead girl (who I think is both hotter and nicer to be around) is disparaged in favor of the Machiavellian, coldly self-interestedly calculating approach.
The deranged late-capitalist military police state portrayed in gritty hyper-realism
You don't know -- 50 cent, Eminem, et al.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpPLd3q0nbQ
Status, wealth, power, all discussed perfectly frankly. The song is even taunting those who are too delicate to face the brutal truth. "You know, but you actin' like you don't know."
Another example:
White America -- Eminem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC8VA7GFbHA
In the 80s this sort of brutal realism would have made people shit their pants.
Some additional thoughts:
Another reason why I love "I'll Stand By You" is because it demonstrates the natural solidarity of the working class, the naturally-congruent self-interests. Yes, it is a materialistic song, but the materialism in a middle-class song leads to social manipulation and petty status-seeking because the middle-class is, ultimately, a class at war with itself. Each member is trying to climb to the top, partly by pushing down those around him/her. Whereas materialism in a working-class context leads to solidarity as the only practical survival response. They cannot afford to play intrigues against each other or manipulate each other.
Notice that the title of the song is "I'll Stand By You," not "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, etc." What is being expressed here is not so much love, as comradeship, which I think is much more touching and powerful. It is much more reassuring to hear "'Cause I've seen the dark side too," or "I get angry too, because I'm a lot like you." Identifying a basis for natural, non-forced, non-manipulated solidarity, inherent in two people's congruent life situations. Whereas "love" implies that you owe something in return to the lover. It is more of a temporary, conditional solidarity. Love is a selfish feeling, it is exclusivist possession of the other person, and you will love someone as long as you feel like it, as long as you see some happiness to gain by it. Whereas you will have little choice but to be a comrade to a person as long as you both share the same desperate situation, whether you like them or not. The arbitrary whims of your feelings in no way threaten the relationship. I can definitely see why Zizek feels averse to love. It is a "gift" that demands even more of the receiver. Comradeship is much better.
A note on 50 cent: just think--his name itself refers to material wealth. Very blatant. But also very honest.
Regarding White America:
Notice the parodies of the 1950s families, TV shows, etc. And since the 1980s were somewhat of an attempted recapitulation of the 1950s, the 1980s are criticized as well.
The implicit message of "White America" is that its problems are its own doing. Parents who grew up listening to 80s pop music, and who now criticize the materialism of the rap music nowadays are being hypocritical. The materialism has always been there, as have the social manipulation, the social-power politics, the status-seeking, etc. It was just that in the 80s it was hidden under a veneer of romanticism, whereas now its naked, brutal truth hits you directly in the face. And in a world with so much obvious social manipulation, status-seeking, etc. at school, how could one not expect to see school shootings? Parents mistakenly criticize this music, which is only a witness to the social strife, anxiety, status-seeking, the subtle socialite warfare among middle-class youth, etc. If these parents really wanted to get rid of these school shootings, they'd have to get rid of the fundamental middle-class status-seeking, pressures, exclusivist-materialism-in
"Hell yeah, I'm the muthafuckin' princess!" ---Here's a girl sarcastically comparing herself to a princess, disparaging that ideal that, in the 80s, formed the romanticist core of a lot of songs. Also note how Disney films have gone away from that royal romanticist plot line (Snow White, The Lion King, Aladdin, The Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Anastasia, Pocahontas, that movie with the two dogs eating the same spaghetti noodle, etc.), towards more scientific, materialist-rooted movies (A Bug's Life, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Wall-E, etc.) Although the industrial, turn-of-the-century London intro sequence survives, as you hilariously pointed out at the beginning of Wall-E.
"You know what I can do to make you feel alright." ---Naked emphasis on pure sensory pleasure. Pure self-interested hedonism, lacking any sort of romanticist mask.
"I'll have you wrapped around my finger...because I can do it better."
The self-interested power relations, the social competition, the status-seeking, the gossiping...all out in the open. Well, at least it is all more honest this way.
Also note how the naive, romantic love of the redhead girl (who I think is both hotter and nicer to be around) is disparaged in favor of the Machiavellian, coldly self-interestedly calculating approach.
The deranged late-capitalist military police state portrayed in gritty hyper-realism
You don't know -- 50 cent, Eminem, et al.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Status, wealth, power, all discussed perfectly frankly. The song is even taunting those who are too delicate to face the brutal truth. "You know, but you actin' like you don't know."
Another example:
White America -- Eminem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
In the 80s this sort of brutal realism would have made people shit their pants.
Some additional thoughts:
Another reason why I love "I'll Stand By You" is because it demonstrates the natural solidarity of the working class, the naturally-congruent self-interests. Yes, it is a materialistic song, but the materialism in a middle-class song leads to social manipulation and petty status-seeking because the middle-class is, ultimately, a class at war with itself. Each member is trying to climb to the top, partly by pushing down those around him/her. Whereas materialism in a working-class context leads to solidarity as the only practical survival response. They cannot afford to play intrigues against each other or manipulate each other.
Notice that the title of the song is "I'll Stand By You," not "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, etc." What is being expressed here is not so much love, as comradeship, which I think is much more touching and powerful. It is much more reassuring to hear "'Cause I've seen the dark side too," or "I get angry too, because I'm a lot like you." Identifying a basis for natural, non-forced, non-manipulated solidarity, inherent in two people's congruent life situations. Whereas "love" implies that you owe something in return to the lover. It is more of a temporary, conditional solidarity. Love is a selfish feeling, it is exclusivist possession of the other person, and you will love someone as long as you feel like it, as long as you see some happiness to gain by it. Whereas you will have little choice but to be a comrade to a person as long as you both share the same desperate situation, whether you like them or not. The arbitrary whims of your feelings in no way threaten the relationship. I can definitely see why Zizek feels averse to love. It is a "gift" that demands even more of the receiver. Comradeship is much better.
A note on 50 cent: just think--his name itself refers to material wealth. Very blatant. But also very honest.
Regarding White America:
Notice the parodies of the 1950s families, TV shows, etc. And since the 1980s were somewhat of an attempted recapitulation of the 1950s, the 1980s are criticized as well.
The implicit message of "White America" is that its problems are its own doing. Parents who grew up listening to 80s pop music, and who now criticize the materialism of the rap music nowadays are being hypocritical. The materialism has always been there, as have the social manipulation, the social-power politics, the status-seeking, etc. It was just that in the 80s it was hidden under a veneer of romanticism, whereas now its naked, brutal truth hits you directly in the face. And in a world with so much obvious social manipulation, status-seeking, etc. at school, how could one not expect to see school shootings? Parents mistakenly criticize this music, which is only a witness to the social strife, anxiety, status-seeking, the subtle socialite warfare among middle-class youth, etc. If these parents really wanted to get rid of these school shootings, they'd have to get rid of the fundamental middle-class status-seeking, pressures, exclusivist-materialism-in
-fact, etc. (And that, I think, requires a social revolution). You can't expect to soften or hide this materialistic strife with romanticism for ever. Sooner or later the obvious illusions had to give way. Nowadays, of course, a lot of 80s music seems corny and naive. Well, of course it was, and purposefully so.
Anyways, today's White America is the result not of passive neglect on the part of parents (The "Parents aren't spending enough time with their children" complaint). It is precisely the opposite: today's White America is the result of the parents (who grew up in the first really materialistic decade, the 80s) interfering too much with their children, infecting their children with too much of their anxious bourgeois status-seeking, pressuring them too much to be pretty and popular and play sports and play a musical instrument and do ballet and do all that other trendy bourgeois stuff, all for the sake of "personal achievement" (the monetary currency of status-seeking bourgeois adolescents in late-capitalism) and "character" (the willingness to strive to whatever lengths in order to conform and meet the expectations of your parents, your other authority figures, and those around you. It is a very fascist mentality, in fact. A perfect breeding ground for little bourgeois Hitler Youth, all the marching band, football, cheerleading, school nationalism, etc.
The main point: today's White America is the logical outcome of the 80s, not a deviation away from the 80s that can be easily corrected with tougher anti-drug and anti-gang efforts, more metal detectors in the schools, more dress codes, etc. Drugs and gangs pay in material wealth. Your kids are just achieving monetary success and status---following your example. Your Eric Klebolds are just reacting to the vicious social manipulation that is demonstrated, for instance, quite nakedly in that Avril Lavigne video "Girlfriend."
But going back to the 80s naive innocence and romanticism is not an option. Putting on a superficial veneer of the happy white middle-class family will not work either---you've already tried that, but we know that however picturesque your little family photo looks (such as at the end of the video for "White America," we know full well that little Eric is in the basement loading his Uzi (to paraphrase James Howard Kunstler). One cannot reclaim innocence. We must overthrow this society of social manipulation entirely, and that means also overthrowing the economic basis of this social manipulation (capitalism and the middle-class). When everyone has a part in the control of the means of production, when everyone is a worker, when we have true comradeship, then we will have our antidote to today's troubled White America.
Anyways, today's White America is the result not of passive neglect on the part of parents (The "Parents aren't spending enough time with their children" complaint). It is precisely the opposite: today's White America is the result of the parents (who grew up in the first really materialistic decade, the 80s) interfering too much with their children, infecting their children with too much of their anxious bourgeois status-seeking, pressuring them too much to be pretty and popular and play sports and play a musical instrument and do ballet and do all that other trendy bourgeois stuff, all for the sake of "personal achievement" (the monetary currency of status-seeking bourgeois adolescents in late-capitalism) and "character" (the willingness to strive to whatever lengths in order to conform and meet the expectations of your parents, your other authority figures, and those around you. It is a very fascist mentality, in fact. A perfect breeding ground for little bourgeois Hitler Youth, all the marching band, football, cheerleading, school nationalism, etc.
The main point: today's White America is the logical outcome of the 80s, not a deviation away from the 80s that can be easily corrected with tougher anti-drug and anti-gang efforts, more metal detectors in the schools, more dress codes, etc. Drugs and gangs pay in material wealth. Your kids are just achieving monetary success and status---following your example. Your Eric Klebolds are just reacting to the vicious social manipulation that is demonstrated, for instance, quite nakedly in that Avril Lavigne video "Girlfriend."
But going back to the 80s naive innocence and romanticism is not an option. Putting on a superficial veneer of the happy white middle-class family will not work either---you've already tried that, but we know that however picturesque your little family photo looks (such as at the end of the video for "White America," we know full well that little Eric is in the basement loading his Uzi (to paraphrase James Howard Kunstler). One cannot reclaim innocence. We must overthrow this society of social manipulation entirely, and that means also overthrowing the economic basis of this social manipulation (capitalism and the middle-class). When everyone has a part in the control of the means of production, when everyone is a worker, when we have true comradeship, then we will have our antidote to today's troubled White America.
The French Revolution was far more totalitarian than Nazi Germany...and far more awesome!
Yes, let me repeat that: The French Revolution was far more totalitarian than Nazi Germany.
Nazi Germany: the grotesque, archaic zombie of Prussian Despotism and German Romanticism, electrified with economic despair and youthful disillusionment, dressed up in an industrialist's top-hat, and hellbent on ripping its Krupp artillery into the flesh of modernity. All this was less totalitarian than the French Revolution?
Absolutely.
For some background first:
Just as in Nazi Germany, in feudal France, people did not exist as individuals. They existed within incorporated entities (guilds of the "mechanical arts" (which existed for both artisans and merchants, and on roughly equal footing in terms of status!)), religious orders, the noble household, the biological family, the master/apprentice type of family, the feudal manor, etc.) If you didn't belong to one of these pateralistic corporativist groups, you were a non-entity (a vagabond, a casual laborer, a petty thief, etc.) You could only become incorporated into one of these social stations by swearing a solemn oath of loyalty to one's king to uphold the honesty and goodness of the Community (in the big, capital, "Gemeinschaft" sense of the term---not in the fake sense of the term that we use today). Incorporation into a corporativist community gave you certain "privilèges" (literally, private laws) that went beyond the common laws, which varied depending on your social station. If you didn't have a social station, you had no privileges, and you were totally at the mercy of common law. Why didn't absolutist France need police everywhere? Because everyone in a corporativist community policed everyone else according to moral norms wherever you were (at the church, at the tavern, in the home, in public, at work, there was no escape into anonymity, unless you wanted to experience social death in being cast out and losing all privileges and possibly all prospects of employment). As rigid and hierarchical as this seems, this was not totalitarian. For one, it was softened by genuine social mores of paternalism (which were long eroded in Germany by the time the Nazis tried to resurrect this feudal zombie), and most importantly, although these incorporated entities were ultimately beholden to the king's goodwill along the lines of a hierarchical pyramid, one had an independent basis of social power within these social stations. One was not subject to the "State" and to the State alone. There were plenty of intermediary institutions.
In Nazi Germany, supposedly nothing was supposed to come between the individual and the State. Hah! The family was FORCED back into an intermediary position (which had actually been eroded by capitalist development and State education). The Nazis had their own secular clergy to provide spiritual guidance to their "Volksgemeinschaft" ("people's community"). The Hitler Youth. The Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts) and Schutzstaffel (Blackshirts), the civil service, the German Labor Front party-controlled unions, the party-controlled marching bands, the (tamed) Catholic and Protestant churches, the freakin' Junker estates, etc. Yes, one served in these social stations at the pleasure of the Fuhrer, and one swore a sacred oath of loyalty to him---just as to a king. But at least you had your social station as XYZ, and Der Fuhrer had his social station as leader and protector of the German nation (which was determined by the archaic qualification of bloodline, not place of birth, civic loyalty (as in the bourgeois-revolutionary U.S. and bourgeois-revolutionary France), or even spoken language---so German-speaking Jews who were born in Germany and who were loyal to the laws and customs of Germany still did not count---because they were not a part of the all-important Community with a capital "C." They were non-entities, not entitled to the special privilèges that German members of the German community were entitled to. At least, as a proper member of the German racial community serving in the Hitler Youth, at least you had some station in life, some specific base of social power and respect.
This is the horrifying spectre of Nazism---a zombie-like resurrection of German romaticism, of solemn torchlight parades, of fervent reveries and panegyrics about organicist Communities (instead of the mechanistic calculations of self-interest and rights of the individual borne out of the Enlightenment, capitalist development, and the bourgeois revolutions)---Nazi Germany as an all-out assault on 1789 and the entirety of modernity (one Nazi ideologue, I forget which, once famously said, "Now we have erased 1789 from human history forever."
All of this is why we should find Nazi Germany horrifying---not because it was "totalitarian." It wasn't (relatively speaking, compared to revolutionary France). Comparatively, Nazi Germany looks like an archaic despotism armed with Stuka divebombers and cyanide chambers (that's being flippant and incredibly simplistic and irresponsible as a historian,but just run with it for a second). But consider the industrial slavery and industrial genocide of Nazi Germany alongside the international slavery and religious slaugther and torture of the early-modern period in Europe. Not exactly equivalent, but definitely a supporting piece of evidence for the argument for continuity, rather than for the common idea of Nazi anti-Semitism and revived organicist Volksgemeinschaft as coming out of nowhere.
What was truly totalitarian---and in a way, really remarkable and progressive for its day---was the French Revolution, a complete social revolution that demanded that nothing come between the individual and the National State, that all citizens be held to the same common laws (no privilèges or special considerations given to you because you belong to this community or that community, to this estate or that estate, etc.), that all citizens have the same equal rights, and that no citizen refuse the dignity of holding himself (eventually, herself) up in public society and in front of the state as an individual. A revolution that forbade you from proclaiming or uniting on any common interest or association that came between one's own interests and the entire nation's interests (this means, no uniting based on "special interests"---the interests of the nobility, of the clergy, of the master craftsmen, of the journeymen, of the bourgeoisie, of the sans-culottes, etc. No intermediary associations that come between you and the National State. No regional associations, no labor unions, no craft guilds, no religious orders, no households of nobility, etc. You must not recognize any interest other than your own self-interest (especially in the marketplace---free trade), and the interests of the National State as the protector of the political order in accordance with Natural Law in which those self-interests can flourish).
How incredibly totalitarian! And how awesome! (For its time...)
BTW, if you are curious where I'm getting this nonsense, it's from this book I'm reading for a class, "Paris: Capital of the 19th century." The book is entitled, "Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848" by William Sewell.
Also, I'd like to end on a note about Marxism: when are we gonna get back to thinking about Marxism as a methodological capstone to the Enlightenment rather than as some Confucianist Mao's-little-red-book mumbo-jumbo apologia for anti-imperialist agrarian despotism in the Third World?????? Eh????
Nazi Germany: the grotesque, archaic zombie of Prussian Despotism and German Romanticism, electrified with economic despair and youthful disillusionment, dressed up in an industrialist's top-hat, and hellbent on ripping its Krupp artillery into the flesh of modernity. All this was less totalitarian than the French Revolution?
Absolutely.
For some background first:
Just as in Nazi Germany, in feudal France, people did not exist as individuals. They existed within incorporated entities (guilds of the "mechanical arts" (which existed for both artisans and merchants, and on roughly equal footing in terms of status!)), religious orders, the noble household, the biological family, the master/apprentice type of family, the feudal manor, etc.) If you didn't belong to one of these pateralistic corporativist groups, you were a non-entity (a vagabond, a casual laborer, a petty thief, etc.) You could only become incorporated into one of these social stations by swearing a solemn oath of loyalty to one's king to uphold the honesty and goodness of the Community (in the big, capital, "Gemeinschaft" sense of the term---not in the fake sense of the term that we use today). Incorporation into a corporativist community gave you certain "privilèges" (literally, private laws) that went beyond the common laws, which varied depending on your social station. If you didn't have a social station, you had no privileges, and you were totally at the mercy of common law. Why didn't absolutist France need police everywhere? Because everyone in a corporativist community policed everyone else according to moral norms wherever you were (at the church, at the tavern, in the home, in public, at work, there was no escape into anonymity, unless you wanted to experience social death in being cast out and losing all privileges and possibly all prospects of employment). As rigid and hierarchical as this seems, this was not totalitarian. For one, it was softened by genuine social mores of paternalism (which were long eroded in Germany by the time the Nazis tried to resurrect this feudal zombie), and most importantly, although these incorporated entities were ultimately beholden to the king's goodwill along the lines of a hierarchical pyramid, one had an independent basis of social power within these social stations. One was not subject to the "State" and to the State alone. There were plenty of intermediary institutions.
In Nazi Germany, supposedly nothing was supposed to come between the individual and the State. Hah! The family was FORCED back into an intermediary position (which had actually been eroded by capitalist development and State education). The Nazis had their own secular clergy to provide spiritual guidance to their "Volksgemeinschaft" ("people's community"). The Hitler Youth. The Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts) and Schutzstaffel (Blackshirts), the civil service, the German Labor Front party-controlled unions, the party-controlled marching bands, the (tamed) Catholic and Protestant churches, the freakin' Junker estates, etc. Yes, one served in these social stations at the pleasure of the Fuhrer, and one swore a sacred oath of loyalty to him---just as to a king. But at least you had your social station as XYZ, and Der Fuhrer had his social station as leader and protector of the German nation (which was determined by the archaic qualification of bloodline, not place of birth, civic loyalty (as in the bourgeois-revolutionary U.S. and bourgeois-revolutionary France), or even spoken language---so German-speaking Jews who were born in Germany and who were loyal to the laws and customs of Germany still did not count---because they were not a part of the all-important Community with a capital "C." They were non-entities, not entitled to the special privilèges that German members of the German community were entitled to. At least, as a proper member of the German racial community serving in the Hitler Youth, at least you had some station in life, some specific base of social power and respect.
This is the horrifying spectre of Nazism---a zombie-like resurrection of German romaticism, of solemn torchlight parades, of fervent reveries and panegyrics about organicist Communities (instead of the mechanistic calculations of self-interest and rights of the individual borne out of the Enlightenment, capitalist development, and the bourgeois revolutions)---Nazi Germany as an all-out assault on 1789 and the entirety of modernity (one Nazi ideologue, I forget which, once famously said, "Now we have erased 1789 from human history forever."
All of this is why we should find Nazi Germany horrifying---not because it was "totalitarian." It wasn't (relatively speaking, compared to revolutionary France). Comparatively, Nazi Germany looks like an archaic despotism armed with Stuka divebombers and cyanide chambers (that's being flippant and incredibly simplistic and irresponsible as a historian,but just run with it for a second). But consider the industrial slavery and industrial genocide of Nazi Germany alongside the international slavery and religious slaugther and torture of the early-modern period in Europe. Not exactly equivalent, but definitely a supporting piece of evidence for the argument for continuity, rather than for the common idea of Nazi anti-Semitism and revived organicist Volksgemeinschaft as coming out of nowhere.
What was truly totalitarian---and in a way, really remarkable and progressive for its day---was the French Revolution, a complete social revolution that demanded that nothing come between the individual and the National State, that all citizens be held to the same common laws (no privilèges or special considerations given to you because you belong to this community or that community, to this estate or that estate, etc.), that all citizens have the same equal rights, and that no citizen refuse the dignity of holding himself (eventually, herself) up in public society and in front of the state as an individual. A revolution that forbade you from proclaiming or uniting on any common interest or association that came between one's own interests and the entire nation's interests (this means, no uniting based on "special interests"---the interests of the nobility, of the clergy, of the master craftsmen, of the journeymen, of the bourgeoisie, of the sans-culottes, etc. No intermediary associations that come between you and the National State. No regional associations, no labor unions, no craft guilds, no religious orders, no households of nobility, etc. You must not recognize any interest other than your own self-interest (especially in the marketplace---free trade), and the interests of the National State as the protector of the political order in accordance with Natural Law in which those self-interests can flourish).
How incredibly totalitarian! And how awesome! (For its time...)
BTW, if you are curious where I'm getting this nonsense, it's from this book I'm reading for a class, "Paris: Capital of the 19th century." The book is entitled, "Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848" by William Sewell.
Also, I'd like to end on a note about Marxism: when are we gonna get back to thinking about Marxism as a methodological capstone to the Enlightenment rather than as some Confucianist Mao's-little-red-book mumbo-jumbo apologia for anti-imperialist agrarian despotism in the Third World?????? Eh????
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